


Products of a war

by AnaVakarian



Series: Mass Effect products [2]
Category: Mass Effect (Comics), Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Background Garrus Vakarian, Earthborn (Mass Effect), Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Feelings, Headcanon, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex, Mass Effect 1, Military Training, Original Character(s), Pre-Mass Effect 1, Pre-Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rebels, Rough Sex, Ruthless (Mass Effect), Sex, Smut, Vanguard (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-09-23 13:49:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20341147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaVakarian/pseuds/AnaVakarian
Summary: Survivance of the decimated Earth population was a priority for the Planet Alliance at the Citadel but not an easy task considering the circumstances. Decisions had to be taken by the military brass, always looking for the common good. Decisions that not always benefit individuals. She was no more than an Alliance slave and it had begun to break her. A rotten but valuable apple in the N7 that they all had contributed to create. A collateral damage from the geth attack. A product of a war.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Story based in the events before and during ME1, introducing the OC Alexandra Murphy and the consequences of the geth attack on Earth.  
***  
I don't leave Hackett or Anderson on a very good place...  
***  
Follow me on Tumblr! [ AnaVGCVakarian](https://anavgcvakarian.tumblr.com/)  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The day of the attack. Somewhere nerby Aberdeen.

The teenager woke up in a fully dark tumb. She could still feel the rumbling of the building when it collapsed although everything was dead-quiet now. Sitting up was her first impulse but she bumped her head with the concrete mass that was no more than three foot above her. A shot of panic rushed through her body and she gasped for air, widening her eyes in the darkness. The youngster extended her hands trying to delimit the space around her body realizing it was not bigger than a niche. At least, she was able to move her arms, which meant they were not broken. A second shot of panic was released when the thought of having a broken backbone invaded her. She focused on feeling her legs realizing they were still there. She wriggled her toes, which was a good sign without any kind of doubt. Her left leg moved when she made the effort, but her right didn’t do it at all. A sharp pain grew in her right thigh as time went by and she lowered her hands in a blind search along her skin.

And she didn’t like what she felt.

Her upper leg was clearly broken and she could feel it in the odd positioning that it had. Besides, a chunk of flesh had been brutally torn off, nearly ripped off of her thigh. The teenager sobbed with the feeling of the warm dampness of her blood on her fingers being now fully conscious of the pain. She lingered her hands further to her right until she touched a thick metallic stick, one of those things builders used to reinforce concrete. She was not in any doubt that the bar had caused the damage. The floor under her was wet and there was a lot of it.

In normal circumstances, the situation would have been bad enough to make her pass out but she was too high in adrenaline and her survivance instinct was stronger than anything else. She struggled to take her oversized shirt off and wrapped it around her limb as she had only seen in films before. It hurt like hell and she cried with every pull in order to tie the long sleeves around it. 

“I’m not stuck. I can move. You’re gonna get out...” Those words were her mantra when she turned onto her belly with a grunt. Her breath became erratic with the effort of creeping; even more when her movement stirred the concrete powder that was settled everywhere around her. She had been close to the window before it collapsed. She must be close to the street. She could see a light in front of her. She would make her way out. 

The tunnel of debris narrowed to a point where she struggled to move her arms but soon she was able to feel the fresh night air on her face. The wreckage scratched her exposed skin although the pain was bearable compared with the one she felt on her leg with every movement. 

Finally, her hands pulled her over the edge of the rubble that had been her house and she breathed the cool air as if she was reborn. It was impossible to say for how long she had been unconscious but it was pitch black outside now and the attack had been during the morning. That meant nearly one full day.

She was not fully out of the worm-hole when the tears appeared in her eyes. She freed herself and fell onto the ground with a mix of relief and grief and a drop on the adrenaline that had kept her fighting. Her mum and her dad… They were both in that house. The teenager curled on her side and sobbed loudly, letting her rage, her pain and her fear escape in the form of tears.

She was alone and she was dying.

Alone.

“This is a nightmare… This has to be a nightmare,” she mumbled with a hoarse voice, a mixture of lack of use and a dry throat.

She startled with the shots at the other side of the street or something that sounded likely, lighting up the darkness like lightning. There were also hurried footsteps. Too many. Some sounded metallic but the others were just heavy. A fight was happening in the darkness right in front of her but her mind couldn’t process what she was seeing. Dark shapes were shooting at each other and one of the creatures grunted orders in a voice that was clearly not human. After the instructions, one of the soldiers run towards her and its silhouette was odd. 

She was in shock and terrified, and that's why she didn’t try to escape. She was only able to sit slightly up resting on her arms before the creature, kind of humanoid in blue armour, said something with a curious deep multi-tonal voice before squatting down next to her. She heart was racing in her chest when he left his sniper rifle aside and raised his hands slowly to take his helmet off. He had been accompanying all the movements with a constant talk in a language she had never heard before. 

Silent tears rolled down her cheeks and trembled when she saw a turian for the first time. 

“Are you going to kill me?” she managed to ask in between sobs. 

The alien tilted his head slightly and tightened his mouth flaps with worry because of her words. His translator worked correctly in spite of the short time the people in the Citadel had to set it up. He rumbled something in his language and pointed to her injured leg. The young turian was aware that she couldn’t understand him, but he had to calm her down somehow as she looked in a panic: he didn’t need the visor to know that. Even with the little knowledge that they had about them, humans, crying lit all the alarms. And she was trembling with fear while her red scarlet blood flooded the ground around her leg. She looked soft, fragile, weak and dirty. Those were his thoughts the first time he saw one of her kind alive.

After pointing to her leg, the soldier got a first-aid kid from his suit while the human followed all his movements with alarm. For all different species, losing a large amount of blood led to death, but the first-aid was almost the same. 

The girl was frozen. His voice didn’t sound like the robotic ones NASA had played over and over again in the media but he was clearly an alien. She looked at his hands undoing the improvised bandage on her thigh noticing he had three fingers on each of them, like a bird of prey. His face was shocking, like a hard grey mask with cobalt blue face paint and a short crest, but he also had two blue eyes, a nose and a lipless mouth, somehow humanoid. And he was broad and tall, but agile in his movements at the same time. He would have looked threatening if it wasn’t for the care and delicacy with which he was treating her.

Once the fabric was gone, the turian looked at her both legs in order to compare and she lied back with a whimper, covering her eyes. Her vitals dropped and his visor told him that the continuity in her bone structure had been affected: her upper leg actually looked like pulp. He called the asari in charge of the medical group and explained what he was in front of, asking for an emergency extraction at the same time: there were not many humans left and this one was not dying under his watch. Two days ago, all the species that lived in the Citadel didn’t know a thing about human anatomy, but they all did their homework and the asari was able to give him basic instructions. He pulled his gloves off to gain in precision and tossed them aside. The human cried when he washed her flesh with the saline solution and literally screamed when he put the semi-detached hunk of flesh back together and wrapped the sterile bandage tightly around. There was nothing he could do for the broken bone but he extracted from his kit a syringe with a chemical compound used by asari to relieve pain and poked her leg with it. Her quietness made him realized she had passed out, probably for the best. He brushed away from her face the strange dirty keratin fibres she had on her head, also noticing that her forehead was damp and cold. She was only wearing small shorts and a tank top and the soft and thin skin on her arms had a strange texture, like bumpy. When he mentioned the symptoms to the medic, she advised him to cover her with a thermal blanket as humans were, as well as turians, highly susceptible to suffer hypothermia. 

The human opened her eyes after he finished wrapping her. She was feeling no pain at last. To be honest, she thought she was finally dying. The turian fluttered his mandibles and tilted his head again, saying something with his deep voice and touched her cheek with a hot talon and she leaned her head into the contact because she didn’t want to die alone. He stiffened when she did that, surprised, but didn’t pull his hand away. Her brown eyes were big and ridiculously expressive, as well as her face, which had impressive mobility. 

“Thank you,” she whispered with her dried broken lips and kept staring at him while he began to emit a soft rumble noise that was used for his people to comfort.

It didn’t take long for the shuttle to appear. A full asari and salarian medical team arrived and they took over him. The female human looked at them with renewed panic and it was that solid that the turian could even smell it.

“You’ve done a good job, cadet,” the asari doctor told him. “We haven’t been able to find many survivors. It’s been a massacre.”

“Will she do it?” he wanted to know with a strange feeling of responsibility burning in his chest.

“I think so. Our researchers have been working hard in order to know the basics of their species. They are not as different as asaris as we thought. Carbon and levo based physiology and biologically are quite understandable.” 

“What is going on?” the human cried when the salarians tied her to the stretcher. Everything was happening too fast and she glanced at the turian with fear as he was the only friendly face she knew. He would be terrified if he would have been in her shoes right now. 

“Ey, do you have a spare translator?” the turian asked the asari doctor while she examined the constants of the girl. 

“Not me, but I think the pilot had one,” the blue alien said over her shoulder.

The turian asked the salarian for the device and came back to the stretcher, placing the small thing in her ear with care. She startled and looked around with widened eyes when the conversations began to make sense. “My parents… They are still there,” she murmured to the turian.

“I’ll try to find them,” he said despite his visor confirmed there was no one else alive. “This is a medical team. Lots of new faces, I know, but they are going to look after you. We only want to help you, ok?”. His voice was full of harmonics and as soft and tender as it had been before. She nodded her head.

“My name is Alexandra… Alex...” the human muttered quietly. 

“I’m Garrus. Hope to see you soon,” he said fluttering his mandibles with a tone that gave out a smile. 


	2. Chapter 2

The sixth of July, 2012. That was the official date when humanity was slaughtered. The date that would go down in history. Humans had shown themselves naive, gullible and, first and foremost, reckless. They had decided to play a grown-up game in a galaxy where they were no more than babies and they had got their fingers burned in the process.

Six billion humans had been reduced to less than ten million. That, in terms of a whole species, was nearly an extermination. They had been decimated by the geth, a race of a networked artificial intelligences that resided beyond the Perseus Veil. Some of the other races had already had some encounters with them, but they knew quite well that the geth never acted without motivation and the Citadel Council knew perfectly well that someone or something had given the order to wipe the Earth off the map. 

The Council knew about humanity prior to the attack but they were never concerned about their intrusion. Their species were still in early stages of development and all the evidence pointed that they would exterminate themselves and their whole planet before reaching a level of achievement enough to be included in the intergalactic agreement. What the Council didn’t expect were the curiosity and adaptability inherent to humans and their ability to tinker with Physics and Technology. They had underestimated them but, when the scientists in the Citadel realized what was going on in the Earth, it was nearly too late. 

The geth fooled them and the results were devastating. A correct synchronization of the high-powered lasers in the spaceships blew the main cities and opened a 20 miles radius crate around them in less than ten seconds. After that, a directed pulse of high-frequency energy swept away the carbon-based life from whole territories like North America or China. Then, the Fighters did the rest of the dirty job, flying over the smaller places destroying what was left.

And the Citadel felt guilty about it because it would have been avoidable. That was the reason why humans had been finally accepted as a part of the Galaxy cooperation agreement, having agreed with some of the sapiens species to help with the reconstruction of the planet, sharing their superior technology and knowledge with the decimated population. 

Field hospitals were established over the surface on Earth in order to save the wounded survivors. Sadly, not many. A full team of salarian scientists had made sure a sample of all the human genetic material found was kept in the Citadel, as well as some animals' samples. They were astonished at the diversity of skin, hair and eye colouration, as well as differences in features, sizes and complexions within humans, being one of the most genetically varied species they have ever encountered. 

Refugees camps and translators were a priority and a new government, military-based, was formed with the help of the survivors of the previous ones. Humans were flexible and adaptable. And in a position of helplessness in which any help was welcome. Even with the grief, they were able to cope with their disguise and carry on living. Because life always goes on.

***

More than one year after the attack.

“Oh, hi! I’m looking for a turian called Garrus. Tall… grey… deep voice…” the turian lady behind the desk looked at her with condescendence as the human had almost described half of the turian population. Alex sighed. “Ok… ehm… cobalt clan marks and blue armour. I believe he was a cadet but I don’t know if he still is... Does it ring a bell?”

“Sorry, but I can’t release any information about our cadets,” the woman said politely.

“I know. But he saved my life one year ago. I’ve been trying to locate him since... I just want to thank him.”

She put a studied puppy-eyes face that turians seemed to find extremely pitiful and the lady smiled with tenderness.

The 17 years old human had made a full recovery in no time and her leg felt as good as it was before everything happened. It didn’t look like before, though: even with the development of a human-compatible medigel and the advances in surgery, the scar she had on her thigh was massive but she bore it with pride as it meant she was a survivor.

Alex had spent all weekend in that part of the planet, just wandering around, visiting some ruins and the amazing landscape of what once was a town in Central Africa. Animals were gone from the surface, some of them extinct as the rhinos. Some others only lived in nature reserves in order to keep them safe and encourage their reproduction. She visited one of them the day before and confirmed with joy that some leopard cubs and gazelles had already born in captivity as all the news informed about. It was a small symbolic sign but it brought a lot of joy among her people in the city.

Her backpack was heavy and she pulled the strap, trying to accommodate it on her back. It contained a clean change of clothes, credits, a salarian-made sunscreen, water and, precisely, two books about salarian history and customs. Alex had already studied everything about asari and turians. These last ones were a challenge because of the obvious physical differences, and understanding their body language and subvocals was still quite hard sometimes.

Counting this one, it was the ninth turian military camp on Earth she visited as the lad had been certainly tricky to find. The clerk clicked her tongue in a gesture that Alex identified with realization.

“Yes! I think he was here. Let me see... “ Alex grinned from ear to ear with her words. She had used most of her spare time trying to find him, basing her research on the blurry memories she had about that night. It felt like finding a needle in a haystack, but it seemed she did it, at last. The lady extracted her omnitool and looked for some information there before shaking her head in a gesture that was clearly copied from humans. 

“I’m sorry, lovely. He has been relieved. He took some time for personal issues. I’m trying to find out when he’ll be back, but I don’t see… Oh! I don’t think he will, actually. I’m sorry”.

Her grin sunk in her stomach with her words. If he was a cadet he might have just been doing a sort of practice when the attack happened, not being the Army his definitive destination. She had read something about how military and hierarchical their educative system was. 

“Is there any chance you can give me his email address?”

“I’m sorry but that’s personal data that I cannot reveal,” the turian said with seriousness.

_"Another turian following rules to the letter, what a surprise,"_ she thought. “Ok. Thanks anyway. At least I know he’s not on Earth anymore,” she said with desperation before turning around and leaving the tent.

It was really hot in that part of the planet. Her long ginger hair was tied up in a bun and she wore the Alliance manufactured shorts and top tank almost everyone had. A couple of soldiers in full armour looked at her with unconcealed interest when she extracted the suncream to apply some on her pale arms, legs and face. Turians were fully covered with those metallic exoskeletons and their origin world, Palaven, was hotter than Earth and highly radioactive. That was why most of their military camps had been established around the Equator latitude. She wouldn’t stand a chance on their planet for sure. 

“Any luck, girl?” the salarian pilot of the shuttle asked her when she got in, returning home earlier than she had expected. They had made the going trip by themselves and had some time to chit chat about stuff.

She shook her head. “Nope. He’s gone, back to Palaven… You know? I think it is time to give up, anyway. I can’t keep spending my salary on this.”

“Ey! We are the cheapest shuttle service in the Galaxy. Always on time!” he said with a fake indignant tone.

Alex chuckled. She had adapted to diversity after the attack. All the species in the Citadel were different but they all had been helpful in infinite ways. Humans owed them their survivance, no doubt of it. 

She looked out through the window whilst the shuttle took off, this time with some turian cadets, no more than 16 years old, that were spending their time off in her city. They were in a good mood, talking loudly and laughing, complaining about their superiors and other colleagues. Then, one of them made a sexual joke about humans and oral sex while giving her a look and the salarian pilot told him off. Even in different species, youngsters were not that different after all.

“I’m sorry, miss. These morons don’t know how to behave in front of a lady,” one of the turians with green clan tattoos said, impossible to say if his words were sincere.

“Not that they are gonna scare me.”

“Some humans are, still.”

“Well… what can I say? There are fools in every species,” she sighed with a crooked grin.

The trip to London lasted less than fifteen minutes. Nearly miraculously, the English city hadn’t been turned into a fumy crater although all the buildings, including the Big Ben and the Parliament, had collapsed. It had been one of the first settlements in being partially rebuilt and the asari had played a massive role in it. London looked now like a scene from one of those futuristic films she watched when she was a child and it felt extremely shocking: a picture she would never get used to. Her little tiny apartment was there, on an undetermined floor on the massive glass building. And the hand-to-hand fight academy she worked in was also nearby.

Alex should thank her dad and his insane obsession to make her train in mixed martial arts as it had been her way of life since everything blew up. She had never been very enthusiastic about it and, even if she was quite good, she couldn’t say she was the best. It had just been a matter of luck, but they were not many survivors that had a brown belt, and she had improved a lot her technique in the last year since she was discharged from the hospital, gaining some status and being able to teach other people. Lots of humans wanted to learn self-defence and turians and asari were also interested in comparing their own fighting styles with human's ones. On the weekends, she had an extra income with the fighting matches organized by a salarian bookie. She could not say that they were a hundred per cent legal, but some of the members of the police were aware of them and never interfered. It was just another distraction to blow off some steam after what happened. She ended up there one night while partying out with her workmates and, quite hammered, they decided to join in when the master of ceremonies asked for volunteers. The turian she fought against kicked her ass, but her performance was not bad at all and she was able to stand more rounds than anyone else, so the organizer asked her to come back next Saturday and so she did. No one gave a credit for her at the beginning but after beating some of the hardest human asses and even some female turians, she had made herself a name in that dark world. Sometimes It was difficult to get out of the building without bumping into an upset opponent and that had lead to some delicate situations before. When that happened, her smuggled Cobra pistol made the difference. And the money was also quite good. 

Alex couldn’t say her life was bad after all.

She had always been a survivor. 


	3. Chapter 3

“This is the list of the best candidates we have been able to find,” Dr Alestia told the human representatives in their Embassy. “Dr Chorban and I have personally analyzed the genome of all of them with the samples we've been collecting and these are the subjects have less chance to reject the implants. It has been hard work, trust me. But the results will be worth it,” the asari scientist explained.

“We have organized them in order of compatibility not just based on their genetics but in their psychology, biology and personal circumstances. If I were you, I would begin with the ones that show a clear Alliance soldier profile, but it’s up to you. We have ten of the implants to try. Obviously, the success of the process depends on various factors and it can't be just reduced to genetics: this isn’t an exact science yet and you have to know that there are always chances of rejection,” the salarian called Chorban added.

Anita Goyle, the human Ambassador at the Citadel, grabbed the note and scanned the short list of thirty names that appeared on it. Names denoting different nationalities and backgrounds that didn't follow a clear patron but for their genetics and the fact that they all belonged to youngsters between 17 and 20 years. This all had been the Council’s idea in order to share the asari’s biotic technology with humans, helping them to create a proper army force.

“Our criteria with the Engineers and Infiltrators have been quite good and the results, magnificent. The combat specialists are also making a fantastic job comparable to our best-trained asaris commandos and turian warriors. And it has only been a year. Imagine the Army you’ll be able to build under the Alliance name using biotic technology, training Vanguard, Sentinel and Adept soldiers to your ranks...” the salarian argued.

But biotics were different than omnitool code learning and technological hacking. They entailed some risks and it would be the first time they were tried in humans. And not even following the normal biotic developing procedure.

“And we are grateful for having the opportunity to train our Alliance soldiers with your recruits. We are aware of their progression,” Officer Anderson said with a polite grin.

“We accept the offer. We need an army that can be compared with the ones of our new friends in the Citadel and any help will be welcome for it. I fully understand the risks, but wars are not won without casualties,” Admiral Hackett ended.

Both the asari and the salarian scientist nodded their heads in agreement. 

“What consequences would it have? I mean… if the body rejects the process… or the implants,” Anita asked.

“The most common one is death but it shouldn’t happen. As I said, compatibility has been tested,” Dr Chorban explained without giving any more explanations. 

The ambassador was hesitant. She was not part of the military and was not a cool-hearted bitch as her army colleagues sitting next to her were. She had lost people on that war… her own son. 

Hackett knew she was having second thoughts about the whole thing but the decision was already made. The Alliance needed biotic powers in its army and that opportunity was a huge step to gather them.

“You’ll have ten of them here next week, on time for our date,” he sentenced as if they were not more important than livestock.

***

“Miss Murphy?”

Alex looked from behind the punchbag she was smacking and was surprised by the sight of the Alliance official in front of her, pronouncing her name. The thought of being jailed for the illegal fights shot in her mind while she dried her damp forehead and tried to make her clothes presentable for the uniformed man in front of her.

“The high Admiral from the Alliance military force had sent me here to give this to you personally,” he handed her a brown stuffed envelope that she grabbed after pulling the boxing gloves off with her mouth. 

Alex narrowed her eyes in suspicion because, although she didn’t know exactly what was going on, she had a subtle idea. “Is this a kind of recruitment strategy? Because I am not interested in it...” she honestly said.

In a speech that the officer must have repeated an uncountable number of times because of his bored tone, he explained, “the Alliance army is recruiting and training a troop of the best soldiers inside. They will be called N7, as the upper rank in the previous military hierarchy in Earth. They will be trained in the same conditions than asari commandos and turian warriors and will also be able to have access to the Spectre rank according to the Galaxy agreement, a distinction that is obtained just for the best soldiers from the different species. Your army needs you, Miss Murphy.” 

There were five seconds of deathly silence before she scoffed.

“At ease, soldier! As I said, I’m not interested in signing up in your club. You can tell your boss that he can come here himself and have a go convincing me if he wants to. Better luck with the next one, mate,” she ended shaking her head with incredulity and offering the envelope back to the official, who didn’t accept it. The man just turned around and left the place with seriousness and those military steps as if someone had stuck a broomstick up into his bottom. 

Alex chuckled and threw the envelope on the floor before putting the boxing gloves back on. She knew her qualities and skills would be appreciated in the Alliance and some of her acquaintances had already joined the Earth military force. But she had a good life, a job, a flat and some money to travel and see what was left of her own world. It might have been selfish, but she enjoyed her freedom more than anything else. She was also aware that she was not very good at obeying orders and, if her parents were alive, they would have agreed with that statement, too.

Five hours later she had finished her last lesson, a high ability group mostly formed by asari and humans. As always, Alex showered in the gym, kissed furtively the neck of the asari she slept with some times and said bye to the manager while heading out. Outside was already dark and she could feel her stomach rumbling with the smell of the Thai restaurant on the corner, so she ended up stopping to buy some Pad Thai noodles. There was no one on the street when she got to her building entrance. It took her exactly 32 seconds to get to her flat on one of the top floors using the lift. The light buzzed over her and twinkle while she reached for the key in her pocket. To her surprise, her own door opened in front of her without warning. 

Alex startled and, awkwardly, her first reaction was to kick the door fully open, hitting hard on the head the uniformed guy that was inside her house. With her heart still racing in her chest and bewildered about the Alliance officer laying semi-unconscious on her floor, she heard a husky voice coming from the inside. “Miss Murphy, would you mind to come in and close the door, please. For your interest, there are two more Alliance officers here, other than me, but no one means to harm you. So stop knocking them down.”

She got in the room holding her breath as well as the paper bag with her dinner, gazing nervously to the high-rank officer that stood up in the middle of her living room with a hieratical gesture. Alex recognised his face from the recruiting ads immediately: that was Admiral Hackett. In the flesh. 

“I didn’t expect that reaction, to be honest with you. Otherwise, I would have been more careful with my men. It seems you are a real fighter.”

She was still trying to assimilate who was in front of her and the fact that she had just knocked down an Alliance officer. “I am sorry. I didn’t… It was not my intention,” she said to the man. He stepped forward and grabbed the paper bag from the Thai restaurant, putting it aside on the kitchen counter while she was still frozen in the middle of the room, following his movements and mumbling apologetic words.

Admiral Hackett had been one of the most respected military men on Earth before the attack happened. The right hand of the US President, he had taken over control of the government once the reconstruction had begun. He could actually be considered the_ leader_ and the one who took all the important emergency decisions. He was a war hero against the geth and rubbed shoulders with the jet-set in the Citadel, controlling also the elite of the Alliance soldiers, the N7. The news only spoke wonders about him and his actions.

“I am sorry for what I said to your officer this afternoon. I couldn’t imagine you would come here. This is… is ridiculous!”

The serious man offered her a seat with a gesture of his hand and she sat, obeying like a child. He towered over her, intimidating even if she was not easily intimidated. She respected that guy and his actions, believe or not, but what Alex never thought was that he would stand in her apartment asking for her.

“Miss Murphy, I’m here because I need you to reconsider my offer. Perhaps my officer was not clear enough about how specifically we need _ you_. Tell me, have you ever heard about biotics?”

“Ehm… yes,” she coughed, unsettled, and the Admiral made a gesture to one of the officers to get her some water. “I’ve read loads about asari biology and physiology and how they developed implants for other species. I… might have even seen the powers in action sometimes.”

“On your little tiny brawls, I suppose? And what do you think about them?”

Alex realized in that exact moment how serious that conversation was and that realization hit her like a ton of bricks. The Alliance army had researched about her, about her story, abilities and activities. And who knows what else they would know. “What are you doing here? What do you want from me?” she asked with a hint of fear in her voice, now. 

The Admiral smirked with sufficiency and patience. “I want you to answer my question, please.”

She was not thinking straight and they both knew it. “They are… all right. Interesting. I guess useful in combat situations. Why?”

“What would you say if I told you that I can give you that power, Miss Murphy?”

“I’d say nothing is for free, Admiral,” she said, immediately regretting her mocking tone. 

The lips of the man quirked in a thin smile. “And you would probably be right. I can offer you biotics, genetically modified to be compatible not just with humans: with your own genome. In return, I want to train you for the N7. I want you to become the first human Spectre. You only have to say _ yes._”

She held her breath involuntarily with the proposal. This was not a random soldier recruitment: it was a big deal, especially coming from him. N7 were high expectancies, but Spectre… that was out of reach for almost everyone whatever species they belonged to. The curiosity growled in her but a feeling in her guts warned her that she might be doing a pact with the devil if she accepted his offer. She stumbled over her words when she spoke again, “I… I don’t think I am the best option for this task, Admiral. To be honest with you… I’ve got some troubles with authority… Even when my parents were alive…” she was about to explain what a terrible daughter she had been but she stopped herself. 

The Admiral knew that was a weakness. “Miss Murphy, this can be your redemption. A way to make your parents feel proud of you and your achievements”

“I’m not that naive to think they would change their mind about me when they are already dead, Admiral.” Her tone was bitter in spite of her smile and he knew she didn’t truly believe her words. 

She was insolent and independent. That was why she was at the bottom of that bloody list they have already gone through. The Admiral never lost his temper but his tone was icy and sounded like a snarl when he spoke again, “well, I have to warn you that the Alliance has control over all the job contracts issued on Earth and can easily cease them, even the sports academy ones. Besides, I suppose it wouldn’t be difficult to get some honest turians to perform a raid in that out of the law Fight Club you have joined in. Not to mention the illegal weapon you carry everywhere with you, which breaks more than nine Alliance regulations. You are still too young to end up in jail, don’t you think so, Miss Murphy?”.

What had been a formal conversation with a middle-aged war hero turned into a direct threat to her life and her blood froze in her veins. When he spoke again, the warmness on his tone was back and it felt truly annoying. “We are creating something big here, Miss Murphy. Can I call you Alexandra? Alexandra, you shall see the whole picture. The prospection… It is beautiful and necessary.”

Whatever she said or did next, she knew she would be screwed up: that man was going to ruin her life, either way, accepting his offer or not. 

She deep-breathed for a long minute in the deafening silence of the living room. Her throat tightened but she was not showing weakness in front of him. 

“All right. I’ll do it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting darker! Not everything can be nice in a post-apocalyptic world. Some angst coming next and I'm a little hesitant about writing smut or not... I've got all the chapters finished already and I still have that doubt! Thanks for the kudos and the comments, by the way! ^^


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited by Saterra ^^

The white light woke her up once again. She tried to raise her hand to remove that strand of hair that had been annoying her since that morning but she couldn’t move. Eventually, she recalled she had been tied up to the bed. Her muscles felt sore and tired and she had a dried crust of drooling going down her chin. That could only mean she had had another seizure but she seemed to be the only one concerned about that fact. At that point, Alex was not sure anymore if the biotic experiment was working or they were just trying to kill her. 

The human pulled the straps that kept her from moving but they were quite thick. She had repeated that same movement every evening with the same results: none. But her stubbornness was a real thing and her memories from the previous days were vague.

“Miss Murphy, relax. I will be with you to undo the straps in a minute,” the voice of Dr Alestia over the comm pierced in her ears. Sensitivity to the sound was one of the side effects of the eezo, a dust form of element zero that she had been exposed to every single day during that week. 

The light was too bright and she was even able to see it through her closed eyes. Some days ago, when everyone thought she was unconscious, she overheard a conversation about the 20 previous candidates that didn’t pass that same experiment she was being put through, and she got absolutely mad at the salarian doctor and Hackett. There had been 20 people before her and they all… Well, even if no one mentioned the actual words, she was sure they all died. Dr Chorban assured her that they had optimized the process and they were taking different steps with her because they had learnt from their mistakes, while all that Hackett said was that everything would be all right in a quite interesting reassuring form. _ Mistakes_. All the people who died in that fucking experiment, they called them _ mistakes_. Just means to an end. Collateral damages. She was fuming mad, quivering with rage while yelling at them to let her go while trying to stand up from the bed, realizing for the first time she might actually die in that place. Two of the scientist assistants restrained her, and as the doctor thought she might hurt herself, they kept her that way, as well as sedated.

The door slid with the usual hiss and she heard the asari steps entering the room.

“How do you feel, Miss Murphy?” she asked her while taking notes in her omnitool looking at all the complex electronic equipment she had attached to her body.

“Dizzy…” she managed to say. “And every sound hurts…”

Dr Alestia quietened her voice. She had the role of the good cop in that theatre.

“That’s a common side effect. We usually follow this procedure with fetus, in the early stages of pregnancy. As they are still in the womb, all the noises around are conveniently muffled, so the process is less harming.”

“Uhm… I see... the Alliance is being impatient…”

Her own voice sounded odd, perhaps an effect of the sedatives. Fetus don’t talk so she would never know. 

“No time to lose, you’ve got a lot to catch up with,” she explained while unfastening the straps. “Can you stand up?”

“I don’t think so,” Alex told with honesty reaching at last for that lock that had kept tickling her cheek the whole day. The movement on her hand was weird and it missed its target a couple of times, but it tasted like a victory when she was able to do it at last. 

“Ok, we have to perform a scan today, just to check everything is alright and the eezo has made the desired effect. Then, we will be done for now.” 

She realized she didn’t have any strength left in her body so didn’t answer at all. Her breath was steady and felt extremely relaxed, obviously drugged. 

“How is my favourite patient doing?” Dr Chorban asked sharply when he got in the room after some minutes alone with the asari. 

“Everything seems to be fine. Constants are regular, levels are stable. Ready for the scan,” Dr Alestia told him as a greeting, cheerful.

“Well, this one has made it further than the previous ones did by now, which is a good sign,” he used a small torch to check the dilatation of her pupils and Alex snarled at the sight of the painful light. For obvious reasons, the salarian doctor was not precisely her favourite person in that room.

“Mmm… As lovely as always,” he said with disgust combing her ginger hair with his fingers in a gesture that was more an examination than a caress. “What a curious specimen. Not many redheads left… Did you know that this particular hair colour is because a recessive allele on their chromosome 16 that alters their MC1R protein? Less than 1% of the population on Earth had that mutation. Interesting,” he said still analyzing the texture of her hair.

Dr Alestia made an acknowledgement gesture. The doctor had been totally obsessed with human genetics recently and that was why her implant would be so tailor-made. Admiral Hackett got in the room right then. “Everything all right? Miss Murphy?” he asked glancing at the semi-naked human on the bed.

“Actually, just waiting for you, Admiral,” the asari said before taking a few steps back, raising her omnitool. 

“Uhm… Her system seems healthy. No brain tumours and no signs of cancer at all. Long term effects still unknown, but everything is treatable nowadays, so I wouldn’t be worried for now,” the salarian said.

“The eezo nodules are growing satisfactorily inside her vertebral column and are in growth in different areas of her body following her nervous system, which is a good sign. It shouldn’t take more than three days to obtain results” Dr Alestia explained. 

“What about her leg? Will she need corrective surgery?” Hackett asked at the sight of the massive scar on her tight.

“That certainly looks ugly although the whole leg is healthy and fully functional. She’s been pushing it with the combat and it has responded adequately. I don’t think it would be an impediment for her performance if it hasn’t been before,” the asari ended.

“Good. Very good. Take her to her room and let’s see how it goes this time,” Hackett ended. 

Alex was locked in a padded room with a massive mirror on the wall. She didn't have to be a genius to know that it was a fake one. The first day she was still too groggy to be worried about the situation but the second one all the fury she had inside snapped. She tried to break the mirror demanding to speak to Hackett and trashed the whole room with her bare hands. It didn’t take long until her outburst became a biotic energy wave that bent the steel door and took it off of its rails as if it was made of cardboard. The human was completely in shock after it. She looked at her hands where an electric purple flare could still be seen, realizing how the tiny hairs on her arms bristled with it. She suddenly felt really tired and starving. 

A whole contention operative was put in place immediately as that was the most dangerous step due to neither Alex or the scientists had any control over her powers at that point. They sedated her immediately and took her to the theatre, where the L5n implant Dr Chorban had put together himself, was surgically implanted in her body and linked to her nervous system on her neck in order to improve her control over the biotic impulses. It would also allow them to regulate the intensity of those powers, even turning them off if it was necessary, although that would kill her for sure. Every implant also had a locator chip the control where the subjects were. 

As a final touch, right after the surgery, they stuffed her body with red sand for three days to stimulate the biotics adaptation and avoid implant rejection. That was why Alex was not able to remember the pain of the little microchip spreading along her nervous system, establishing connections between her brain and her nerve endings. 

What she did remember was the withdrawal syndrome from the drug, and it was terrible. She didn’t feel or look better than a zombie when they allowed her to go out of her room three weeks after the whole process began. Not that there were plenty of things to do in that facility, but there was a library, a gym, a training room and a dining hall, as Dr Alestia explained after showing her her new bedroom. At that point, the human was terribly regretful about her decision and the only thing she could think of was in telling Hackett that he could put her in jail if that pleased him, but she couldn’t stand any more torture. Anyway, the Alliance Admiral didn’t drop by again in the facility, just the asari and the salarian doctor and their troupe of assistants. Totally drained of energy and completely apathetic, Alex spent most of her first day of pretended freedom in the library, sitting on the floor with her forehead resting against the coolness of the glass window, looking to the false sky in a Citadel she hadn’t been able to explore yet. 

When she heard the steps coming towards her, she felt utterly disinterested about them.

“Ey, you must be the new one. How are you doing?” His voice was annoyingly cheerful and Alex came back from her daydreaming to look at the guy who was speaking and was sitting next to her: black hair, brown eyes, handsome, tall and muscular… the perfect picture of an Alliance cadet.

She snorted quietly with the idea and went back to rest her forehead on the window pane. It felt nice and cool and she could have been all day just there, but something on her mind told her to make the effort to speak to that guy: he had been the only one in that place that showed some interest in how she was, after all. “I… don’t know. I’m tired. I don’t want to be here anymore”. She sounded too pathetic.

“I see… Is this your first day out?” the guy was a little too close to make her feel comfortable. She didn’t answer but gazed at him narrowing her eyes and he looked amused by it. “Well, bags under your eyes, extreme paleness, lifeless gaze, sloppy in every sense of the word… It seems so. Piece of advice? First days are shit, but you’ll get better,” he said with a grin, making Alex snap with fury again.

“Fuck off. How the hell can you be so happy after everything that happened? I need to speak to Hackett…” 

She scrambled to her knees trying to stand up, but she couldn’t. The guy raised a hand still with the smile on his lips but, instead of touching her, he emitted a blue energy through his body and she felt pulled up by his power as if she was weightless. It was the first time someone used biotics on her, also the first time she was able to see them that close. 

“Shit, how did you…? How do you use them?” she asked with curiosity and definitely less apathy than a minute before. She had to grab the back of a chair for not collapsing back onto the floor.

“More practice and less grumpiness is the main rule. Giving it some time is also important. How do you want to use the biotics straight away if you can’t even stand up by yourself? Have you eaten anything at all?”

Alex suddenly felt strangely awake and conscious of her own state at that moment: she hadn’t set foot in a shower for a week, her Alliance tank top and shorts were, for sure, disgusting and she was starving. Her throat tightened. She had been through hell in that place, completely alone, being no more than another guinea pig for the Alliance and she would never forgive that. But she was alive. “For how long have you been awake?” she asked trying to hide the tension in her throat and the tears burning in her eyes.

“One month now. And I didn’t wake up better than you,” he was still grinning stupidly.

“Was it worth it? After everything...” her voice broke and she was not able to finish the question.

He looked quite serious now when he stared in her eyes. “Every single pain you’ve suffered, it will pay off. Trust me.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek and the redhead nodded at the guy and accepted his arm when he offered her to help her up. 

***

“Come on! You can do better than that, Kaidan! Who do you think you are attacking? Your granny?” she teased him in the training room where they both were practising shockwaves. 

“Shit, woman. You are a pain! Look and learn!” he said before launching a massive one that threw four of the dummies into the air. 

It was actually impressive. 

“Well, not too bad, I have to say…” she recognised with a raised eyebrow. “But I think I can do better.”

“More than four, really? No way you can do that...”

There were ten humans in the facility, matching the number of implants the Citadel scientists had given the Alliance. None of them had been the first option on the list. Some of them, not even the second. Alex had actually been the last one. Every morning they had physical conditioning, resistance and strength circuits, and biotic training. Then, some spare time for study, hobbies or whatever they wanted to do always inside the limits of the facility. Every two days they were subjected to an exhaustive medical exam to check their vitals and to scan their implants and tumour growth, that were always according to the expectancy. Both Dr Alestia and Dr Chorban couldn’t be more proud of themselves. The Asari was somehow kind, but the Salarian gave her the chills every time he touched her, like if she was not more than a piece of DNA ready to be decoded. 

Kaidan and Alex had stood out within the other cadets with no doubt. They both kept competing against each other every afternoon in an imaginary contest to see which one was more powerful. Another way to simply spend time in that place. 

Alex pulled all the dummies back together and got ready for her attack. Her biotics shown in purple before she released the shockwave that went straight to the unfortunate humanoid figures, throwing four of them into the air as if they were bowling pins. She grimaced in frustration while he burst into laughter. 

“Too much to learn, young padawan…” he joked and she threw him a glove in response. 

“I need to eat something or I will pass out. But I’m not done with you yet,” she said pointing at him with her finger.

They sat on a mat eating one of the nutrient bars. Burning energy on a fast pace was one of the side effects of Biotics: hunger was nearly a constant feeling.

“You can’t imagine how much I miss real food. I would kill for a steak right now,” he said biting a piece of the brown protein bar.

Alex stared at him with disgust. “Oh, man. I am a vegetarian. But I miss ice-cream so much…” she admitted.

“Have you got all your stuff packed already?”

Alex chuckled with irony. “_ Stuff _? You have to be kidding me, right? They didn’t let me bring anything with me.”

They remained quiet for a couple of minutes on a tense silence. Their recruitment circumstances couldn’t have been more different: Kaidan said a categorical _yes _to the recruitment officer. He had all the skills and ideology the Alliance was looking for in a soldier, including that patriotic feeling towards his planet that Alex found particularly irritating. He would love to fight and die for his principles and for the Alliance ones (very similar ones and the others in fact) or in order to defend the peace in the Universe. And he was actually enjoying that: the military training, the N7 perspective, the goal of gaining a Spectre status… While she just wanted to survive and weasel her way out as soon as she was able to, a complicated matter considering they were the brand new Alliance toys. They would be departing to Eden Prime tomorrow, one of the military colonies that had been established to train the best soldiers, no matter the species they belonged to.

“You know what? I do really hope that they forget about us in a couple of years. Perhaps the Alliance will gather a brand new army of biotic soldiers and the first version of us will become disposable, who knows...”

“Would you quit if you had the option?” Kaidan asked although he knew her answer already. She sighed but didn’t answer him, as she knew in that place no one was ever alone. 

Behind the fake mirror of the training room, Officer Anderson and Admiral Hackett followed the progression and development of their biotic recruits. There was no privacy in those premises and they had eyes and ears everywhere. Especially, over the ones with an outstanding power or the ones who were discordant. Kaidan Alenko was one of them, just on the good side. Alex Murphy was the other one, but it was not a surprise that she met both ends. 

“She’s not gonna be easy to tame, do you know that, Steven?” Anderson uttered, thoughtful, looking at both recruits behind the fake mirror.

Admiral Hackett breathed deeply.

“They’ve got some ways to shape people like her in Eden Prime. Trust me, that place has nothing to see with its name. What that girl needs is discipline and she’ll come in terms with our goals. She’s Alliance property now, anyway. They all are.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8 years after the attack

The boardroom in Council area of the Presidium was ample and luminous and it was mainly used to hold meetings regarding the most formal and important issues concerning any of the major and minor races that lived the Citadel and were associate members. Even if asari, salarian and turian meant nearly 90% of the population of the place, being asaris and salarian the foundings of the Council indeed, other races as Elcor, Volus or Hanar cohabitated there and had also embassies in order to protect and defend their interests within the other sapien alien species.

Today’s meeting would involve the Council representative organ, Tevos for the asari, Valern for the salarians and Sparatus, the turian Councillor. On the other side of the table, Captain David Anderson, the new Earth Ambassador Donnel Udina and the elected Earth President Stephanie Yamazaki. 

The topic they were trying to bring up today was prickly and none of the humans wanted to appear ungrateful when the Citadel had helped Earth so much during the last eight years. In that time, the Council had decided humans had to meet a list of agreements in order to fully belong to the interplanetary association, mostly regarding their organization and government system, but also some related to environmental issues highlighting the need of creating a more sustainable planet. Reports were issued every three months and discussed during those meetings, establishing new aims for the next trimester. 

“Well, I’m proud to say that we have achieved a 100% recycling rate. The population is more conscious about the damage we were infringing to the planet and the colour recycling system has been working amazingly during the last six months. We have to thank your people, Valern, for the environmentally friendly alternatives to plastics,” Stephanie explained looking at her notes. “On the other hand, our reforestation effort in America and East Asia has paid off and the CO2 levels have been reduced to a time before the first Industrial Revolution.”

After the attack, any trace of biological life in some continents was practically exterminated. That included the Amazon, the Earth green lung, although the ground had proven to be fertile. One of the priorities the Council set for Humanity was to reforest at last 30% of the land of the planet, which meant more than a full-size continent. The chosen one, due to the destruction it had been gone through, was America. Thanks to asari growing technology, the continent was now a full blooming forest that would provide Earth with the necessary oxygen to maintain life going on without the need of any other external technology. 

“Good. Those are very good news. How is the progression in East Asia?”

“We are still working on it. The expectation is to have the ground conditioning finished next month. Then we’ll begin with the reforestation,” Udina explained. 

“Fantastic. I’m glad to hear that. Our experts said already they have been positive changes in the weather conditions,” Valern carried on with the report.

“That is true. We are one degree cooler than twenty years ago and the weather conditions don’t seem to be that extreme anymore. Further investigation and data collection would be required, anyway.”

“What about the birth rate?” the salarian asked.

“It has increased slightly, but it’s still around 2%. People are still quite uncertain about the future and many of them are still recovering from the grief of losing their families and friends. I guess is normal and it will take some time…” Anderson explained.

“Eight years is a long time. Nothing wrong at all with the fertility tests?” the salarian carried on.

“No, councillor. Everything is correct. I know this matter is important for you, but it makes us actually feel like endangered animals,” Stephanie complained.

“Well… I am sorry, but given the circumstances…” Valern said.

“We are just trying to make sure everything is fine and you can perpetuate your species. Just an innocent concern,” the asari intervened.

“Our people need time. At least a whole generation will be traumatized about what happened. The last thing some of my people are thinking about right now is in reproduction,” the President explained. 

Udina got back into the conversation, “Yes, but they are right. We need to encourage it somehow. Probably having a longer maternity and paternity leaves, or some extra benefits. We have to seriously think about this,” he agreed with the Council. 

“What about the main cities? Have the altercations been reduced?” Tevos asked. 

That was their cue to address the subject. With just 10 million people remaining it had been decided they all cohabitated together in one of the five cities that had been rebuilt or created: London, North Germany, Poland, Hungary and Central France. The territories were conveniently chosen because of their proximity, raw materials, clean water, easy access and communication and some other factors like weather and soil quality. The decision had been highly criticized at first by its clearly European centralism but keeping in mind that America had been completely annihilated as well as nearly all of Asia, the options were drastically reduced. The cultural clash in the cities had been remarkable and unavoidable, even if things worked fine at the beginning, mainly because of the shock and the still ongoing trauma. Recently, some altercations and discordant voices had arisen demanding more autonomy for Earth to deal with its own matters like, for example, the construction of a city in North Africa that could be home to the extent African population. An idea that the Citadel Council had disagreed from the first moment and banned for now. 

But above all those issues, many people were starting to grow uneasy of the extensive cooperation of the turians with the Earth police force. Turians, being a highly hierarchized and military race, had reinforced the thinned Earth army and police with their own soldiers since the attack. But the fact of having an alien species being the authority figures in the new Earth was making people unappeased and looked at them with distrust. Even if they were actually being helpful and lowering the criminality down, humans were humans in the end, and they didn’t like to feel the pressure of an extraterrestrial race controlling over them.

“Indeed, our cooperation has been amazing during these eight years and your help has been highly appreciated.” Udina began. “Our police system has blossomed thanks to your instructors and the resources you have given us. I think Earth is ready for the challenge to tackle its own security from now on.”

Captain Anderson nodded with approval in front of those words they all had agreed during the previous meetings while the turian councillor leaned back in the chair and the asari smirked. 

“You are asking for us to withdraw,” Sparatus uttered.

“You are welcome to keep your positions and the settlements on the planet, but we are asking for more autonomy to deal with our own police issues, yes,” Stephanie seconded.

“I see… “ the turian said with a gesture of disbelief.

“Humans disagree with the fact of having turian authority all over the planet. As they see it, we are under your command,” Captain Anderson explained.

“But you know quite well that is not the case,” Sparatus defended himself. 

“We are, yes, and we have explained it to the members of the public. But I just think that reducing your presence in our police force will help in easing the altercations.” Both salarian and asari sighed. 

“This is a matter we have to discuss further, although I suppose it makes sense,” Tevos admitted. “However, and in my opinion, it would be wise to keep some of the turian hierarchy inside your police statement, just to have an external assessor.”

“Are you basically saying that we cannot autoregulate ourselves?” Stephanie, who was quite outspoken, asked.

The asari looked at her with some amusement, “What I’m trying to say is that corruption is a fact in every part of the Galaxy. Prevention and external control is the only way to tackle it efficiently.”

“I see the point in reducing the turian presence if it causes a nuisance. Not total withdrawal as humans are not precisely recognised by their moral integrity,” Valern gave his point of view. salarians could be quite blunt as well.

“I hope that was not an insult…” the Earth president began, but Udina cut her off.

“We all have our weak points and we are fully aware of which are ours. In my opinion, the offer is fair and it would allow us to maintain a good partnership with the turians. It is a win-win for me,” the diplomatic said. 

“Fair enough. Let’s give us a couple of days for you to come with a progressive withdrawal plan and we’ll meet again at the same hour to come out with an agreement. I’m glad Earth is doing well and your efforts are remarkable,” the asari congratulated them.

“Thank you very much, Tevos. There are important interests on the stake,” Udina replied.

“By the way, congratulations on your first human Commander in the N7! We all have heard wonders about Shepard and her mission with the Prothean beacons. It would be good if she could be promoted into the Spectre status soon,” Sparatus intervened.

“Well, she is brilliant and committed. And a good leader too. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to prove ourselves,” Captain Anderson said.

“Although… that Saren Arterius thing… She cannot just burst in here with an accusation as grave as she did. She needs evidence,” Sparatus advised.

“Well, she is investigating as she’s been asked to do by the Council and I’m sure she’ll come up with something that proves her accusations. I fully trust her criteria in this matter.”

They were already leaving the place patting the other’s backs when Anderson got the call of the N7 Sargeant announcing that Lieutenant Murphy had arrived in the Citadel.

Anderson sighed with resignation and shook his head. That bloody woman was a constant trouble and she had been a real pain in his arse. As expected, Eden Prime didn’t fold her at all. And now, this.

“Lock her in a cell. I’ll be right there,” he sighed again through the comm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited by Saterra ^^


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Horrea and Saterra for being the super-editors of these words.

“Good morning, 2nd Lieutenant Murphy. Long time no see,” Anderson said stepping into the room. The 26 years-old N7 soldier stood up and saluted with a quirk of an ironic smile, before sitting down without being told by her superior.

“I missed you, Anderson. It’s always nice of you to pay a visit,” Alex replied with a deep sly tone. “No Admiral this time?”

Captain Anderson dragged a chair towards the table and dropped a bulky folder on it with a loud thump. “Busy days on Earth. I will be dealing with you from now on,” he said sitting down, mentally readying himself to deal with her insolence and to keep calm, as always. That was probably why his next outburst of anger and his scream were a surprise. “What in the fucking glory of God were you thinking about? Shit, Murphy. We are already closely scrutinised while we try to get back our military and police autonomy on Earth. And now this?”

She startled in her chair with his reaction. Anderson was usually moderate and restrained. She could notice he was really pissed off this time. You killed them! In cold blood! You fucking killed them one by one! This is not just insubordination. Your lack of morals has turned into a serious problem for the N7!”

Alex clenched her fists in front of his accusations, trying to control herself. But now, she was the one pissed off. “Fuck you and fuck your N7 morals! I just did what had to be done. Detention, trial and jail was the best option you had? Those bastards are better off dead! Did you see the bodies of the colonists? For fuck’s sake! Half of them were children! They slaughtered them! I only regret not having had the time to torture them first,” Alex shouted at her former superior. 

The Batarian pirates her battalion had been hunting for the last six months had reappeared on one of the colonies that Earth had established in the Skyllian Verge. They had attacked the colony, torturing and killing everyone there. They were able to catch them red-handed, but the harm was already done. Most of the pirates were killed in the shooting, but the Alliance troops managed to arrest a few of them, including their Captain. While they were being restrained, their leader had joked about how much a little girl with her same hair colour screamed when he tortured her, and wondered if the N7 Lieutenant would have screamed in the same way. The rest of Batarians laughed the joke, and Alex went berserk. She killed the three of them with a single shot to the head in cold blood, looking at them straight in the eye while doing it. Then, she snapped the neck of the Captain using her biotics. None of the Alliance soldiers that were in the place with her did anything at all to stop her. 

“This behaviour is not acceptable for the Alliance, and even less for an N7 marine, Lieutenant Murphy. Even if I can understand your reasons, you had orders! We have a whole galaxy watching over us!”

She chuckled with a gesture that looked like a grimace. “You can stick your fucking N7 orders up to your arse. Wouldn’t you have done the same as me, Anderson? They deserved worse after what they did… after what they said. And none of your other soldiers stopped me because they knew I was right. That’s what I’m here for, Anderson, killing for you like a fucking hunting dog.”

“When will you understand that this is not about you, but about _ us _, the Alliance. The Earth…” he began.

Alex narrowed her eyes with blazing fury. That was the card they had been playing during the last seven years with her: the common good.

Anderson shook his head in disappointment. If it had happened before the attack, he could have just alleged that the prisoners were trying to escape. But now he would have to make something else up in order to pass the Citadel’s reviewing of their missions. And they also wanted to review her career, which was even worse.

“You screwed up, Alexandra. Your actions have reached top ears. The Citadel’s military jury wants to examine this case and your career path. That’s why I brought this with me,” he said tapping his fingers onto the massive folder on the table. 

She sighed and leaned back in the chair with resignation. Her voice was a plead when she spoke again, “I just want to leave, Anderson. Just… let me go.”

The man looked at her for a few seconds. He knew all this would happen at some point and he felt secretly sorry for her. He was aware that being a soldier hadn't been her choice at all. Nor her fault. That’s why his next words had a touch of fondness when he spoke again. “You know I can’t, Alexandra. That’s not up to me. But it would make things easier if you met your part of the contract. I just want to help you and clear up the charges for the good of the N7. But I need your version of everything. And I have to record it.”

She covered her face with both hands and deep-breathed a couple of times. She would have acted the same way again being in the same situation and felt no regrets at all. But she knew a military jury was bad: she didn’t want to end up locked.

“Ok, what do you want to know?” she said in the end, defeated. 

“Why did you attack the Asari private on Eden Prime? That was… just four months after your arrival, 7 years ago now, am I right? For God’s sake… only four months there and all the turian hierarchy already knew your name… That was embarrassing.”

Alex snorted with disdain, moving forward to rest her arms on the table, leaning on it. 

“You can ask Engineer Harper how that was,” she replied with a hardened gesture. “They split us up in different groups and barracks, in mixed interspecies teams. Each contained specialists of every class. My group was not too bad, a couple of turian soldiers, a full biotic asari, a salarian engineer, a human Infiltrator and me as a Vanguard. We adapted quite well to each other, even if the turians considered us an inferior piece of shit, I was able to beat their asses a couple of times in hand-to-hand combat which gave us some status. But some of the other humans were not as lucky as I was. Engineer Harper was the only human in a group of asaris and turians. The turians just ignored her but one of the asaris… she was making her life a nightmare: humiliations, jokes about our annihilation, that we owed them our ape lives…” Alex took a deep breath again. “One day I found Engineer Harper crying in the showers. It took me a while to make her talk, but eventually, she did and she told me that the biotic bitch had raped her. A mix of that mental trick they do and finger penetration. She also had marks around her neck, matching strangulation.” 

Anderson made an acknowledgement sound but didn’t intervene. He had read the report about Engineer Harper beforehand: it supported her declarations, as she had been clearly raped and her physical and psychological injuries confirmed it.

“Were you on good terms with Engineer Harper?”

“We were friends”.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, sir” she replied, ironically. “I was not fucking with her if that’s what you are asking” 

“What happened next?” he asked.

Alex looked at him, challenging, “Lights were already off. I ordered Mike, the infiltrator, to take her to the infirmary. And I went to her barracks.”

“What were your intentions in doing that?”

Alex smirked. “Have a friendly chat? I pulled the Asari out of her bunk bed and tossed her out of the building. And we argued. And then it turned into a biotic fight. General Victus stopped us.”

“It says here that she was quite hurt,” he commented, scanning the infirmary report on the Asari.

“Perhaps. I’m good at what I do,” she replied, dryly and bitterly.

“Did you want to kill her?”

Alex shook her head slowly, “I just wanted to give her a lesson: don’t fuck with us.”

“And then, with General Victus…?”

The general was a war hero and a respected turian, one of the top military-men in their hierarchy. He directed that military camp and the training of the most brilliant cadets in the galaxy, so he was in charge of the welfare of the men and women under his command, independently of their species. 

“I… reproached him for this, told him that he didn’t know how to keep his people safe and... I might have yelled at him and insulted him, too,” Alex looked regretful about it and her tone turned quite serious. “He chucked me in a detention cell for seven days. When I got out, Engineer Harper had left the place and the N7. General Victus… he called me into his office and told me that she had asked him to thank me. And he apologized. Not for the detention time, I guess my behaviour was quite inappropriate considering who he was. He apologized because he hadn’t noticed about the racism in his premises. He tackled this issue afterwards. No more problems.”

“Adrien Victus saying sorry… I would have loved to see that…The Asari was kicked off out of the commandos, did you know that? And was also judged on Tessia.”

“I know… the General told me”

“Good. And the Engineer? Do you know anything about her?” 

“She went back to Earth. That’s the last thing I know.”

Anderson exhaled slowly, looking at the red-headed woman in front of him, analyzing her. And she held his gaze, challengingly.

“You were an outstanding cadet, both in physical and biotic subjects. But then, there’s this… list of stupid rebellious things… like fluorescent laces on your boots? That took you to detention again.”

Alex chuckled, “I wanted to look different. Everyone was the same there.”

“You stole food to feed pyjaks. _ A lot _of food.”

“They were hungry… as I was.”

“Patches stitched on your uniform… Tardiness when coming back from your shore leaves sometimes… What the hell does this say about your hair?” he was frowning again, looking at one report.

“They ordered me to cut it and I refused. I spent another week in the detention cell before they asked me again, and I said no, of course. I stayed for one month in that cell then. They… cut it in the end.”

“Hair grows….”

“I know. But I didn’t want a haircut” 

Anderson sighed, examining the rest of the minor detentions. “You got into a fight with one of the turian soldiers in your team… out of the established wrestling hours.”

She snorted and twisted a wry smile. “Is that what it says there? A fight? Well, I guess it began like one, although I’ve got a slightly different memory about it.”

Anderson frowned, not fully understanding what she was trying to say. 

“In short, we were _blowing some steam_, as turians like to say, and the sentinels caught us. Funny that they tried to cover it up as a fight, I didn’t know the interspecies mingling was still a taboo.”

Anderson’s face was a progression of ignorance, doubt, realization and surprise. The last one mixed up with some kind of disgust, perhaps. Turians were… quite different from what you could find in a human man.

“Well, I guess that’s better than another fight.”

She chuckled again, saying, “trust me, it was,” and making Anderson uncomfortable.

“You were paired with Shepard and Kaidan during the final manoeuvres. Your team won, actually.”

The Captain looked up at her. She was smiling. An actual honest and proud grin.

“We did a good job. Shepard is a good leader and Kaidan is amazing with his biotics.” 

“As you are with yours. And with your soldier training. You are an outstanding Vanguard,”

The grin disappeared immediately. “That was a good year. The human team kicked some turian and asari asses there, proving our worth. No hard feelings after but we made ourselves valuable. Then… the training was done. I spent a year in a mixed battalion, defending the outside borders and protecting a research and exploration position in the Hades Gamma.”

Anderson cut her off. “Some detentions for gambling, drinking, organizing hand-to-hand fights and… seducing your former officer? Really?”

The Lieutenant shrugged with an innocent gesture, “I was bored.”

Anderson shook his head again. Eventually and due to her skills, Admiral Hackett stationed her with the Alliance squad that hunted the Batarians pirates, since the Alliance soldiers needed some N7 support for this matter.

“You are one of the best N7 soldiers that we have, Lieutenant Murphy. Your actions in battle speak for themselves. Why you don’t want to serve the Alliance and the Citadel?”

Alex snarled with fierceness and raised her voice, aggressively.

“I am tired of your psychological tinkering as much as I’m tired of being a soldier. I want to live my life, to choose where to go, what to do and who to do it with. And I don’t want to pronounce the words _ yes sir _ in my fucking life ever again. I’m no more than a war prisoner, Anderson.”

Anderson turned the recorder from his omnitool off. He didn’t want her to mention anything about the terms on which she had been introduced into the N7 project in the first place. 

“Alexandra, I’m not in a position to let you go. This process will take more or less twelve weeks and I’m sure, even with all these… things… you will go back to active service afterwards. Even with what happened to the Batarians. Worse things have been seen during war times. You are not going to jail. For the time being, the only thing I can do for you is to grant your free flow in the Citadel. Take it as a holiday break if you want to.”

She snorted again. “You are not afraid I might escape if you do that?”

“I can power down your biotics with a command on my omnitool. I can even disconnect them, which would lead to an agonizing nervous system failure and subsequent death. For the common good, I hope we won’t have to reach that point,” his tone hid a veiled threat. 

She dedicated him a stare full of rage but Anderson was able to feel the pain and the frustration hidden under the mask of anger. She was right: she was an Alliance slave and it had begun to break her. A rotten but valuable apple in the N7 that they all had contributed to create. A collateral damage from the geth attack. A product of a war.


	7. Chapter 7

The rhythmic beat of the electronic music and probably the smell of mixed-species sweat was the main characteristic of that place. The Flux had become one of the most popular and _out of the law_ clubs in the Citadel and gathered lots of party-goers from different parts of the galaxy that, like her, only wanted to get lost in the flashing lights and primal music. The place opened during the weekdays as a normal drinking pub, but during the weekends was when the club showed its true darkest face, from Friday evening until Sunday the music, the alcohol and the drugs didn’t stop flowing in a non-stop rave.

It was her third weekend Alex was in the Citadel and the second she spent in the Club. Even if she didn’t know anyone there, she hadn’t had any problem finding friends when everyone was high. She had done some drugs before a long time ago when her parents were still alive. They never considered her an easy teenager and the truth is that she didn’t make it less difficult for them. But after they caught her, she had never used again. Now it was different. She didn’t care about the aftermath, anyway, she would be back with the N7 in no time. She just wanted to destroy herself and have as much fun as she could during the process.

Saturday night and Alex was dancing with a group of humans she had met last week when one of the girls offered her one of those new Asari ecstasy pills. They had been flirting before but now they were dancing together way too close to be just a simple dance. The beautiful dark-skinned girl who had invited her to the drugs used her own fingers to put it in her mouth and Alex licked one of them provocatively before releasing it.

Then everything got brighter when the door slammed open and the lights went on. The music carried on while the Citadel Security Services, or C-Sec in short, took positions in the place with their weapons already drawn. 

“This is a raid. Please, keep calm and obey the officers' orders and we will be done in no time.”

Alex’s memories went slightly fuzzy from there, early effects of the drug. Her friend turned out to be a drug dealer and the female turian who performed the search on her found a bag full of asari pills in her purse. The human insulted the turian when she saw the handcuffs and the C-Sec replied with an inappropriate punch that left the dealer bent on her knees. Without any clarity of mind at that point, Alex made the stupid decision of stepping up to defend her project of a one-night-stand before the turian was able to launch a second one. She threw a blow to her elbow before flipping her around and grabbing her on a restraining hold. However, before Alex could even blink twice, a male C-Sec Officer in blue armour subdued her and pinned her down on the shiny black floor of the Flux with her arms and a turian knee on her back. 

“Fuck you! She punched her, didn’t you see that?” she shouted over her shoulder to the guy while the loud sound of the music muffled her words. He didn’t say a word but glared at the female C-Sec and she froze in place. 

“She resisted and…” the C-Sec stammered an excuse, but the Officer cut her off.

“I perfectly saw what happened. We’ll have a word about this later. Take her out of here,” he said with a frosty tone while handcuffing the redhead woman.

Eight detentions linked to drug dealing and one for aggression to a C-Sec officer. Nearly two kilograms of Asary ecstasy and one of cocaine, a human drug, had been confiscated and the Flux had been, once again, close down. The Investigation division had been gathering evidence to support that raid for some time as they had tangible leads that the owner was one of the kingpins of a drug cartel that operated in the Citadel and Omega. This had been the second time they shut down that damned place that year but the owner seemed to have good friends within the Council and probably in C-Sec too. The Salarian always played the _unawareness_ card and had always got on his own ways. It was not a surprise they hadn’t found any incriminating evidence against the guy, but this time they had confiscated the accounting books to find anything that proved he had been laundering money using the Flux. That gave him some hope although, deep down, he knew the club would be reopened in no time and the Salarian would walk free again. That was his job as an Investigator officer. Even if it has proven to be utterly useless and it didn’t change a single thing in the end. 

The C-Sec took the prisoners to their HQ and they were all interrogated and locked in different cells. Then, it had been Alex’s turn to explain her version of the events but she was already too high to give a shit about anything. She laughed when the turian with white colony tattoos asked her with infinite patience what had happened. Another turian came in the room and, even if all the sounds were slightly distorted at that point, she recognised the voice of the officer who had immobilised her. The C-Secs spoke for a little while before she could fully focus on their conversation.

“I understand that Marca punched that human, but her reaction was a little bit primal, don’t you agree?” the sitting turian said, pointing at her with his head.

“It’s power abuse and you know it’s not her first time. You can’t charge her with authority aggression because I perfectly saw what triggered it. And I intend to declare my version if that’s necessary.”

The redhead woman had an elbow on the table and her head resting on her hand. She was staring at him with blown pupils and a happy grin across her face. 

“I can’t accuse her of possession because she didn’t have anything on her. But I can’t release her, either. She doesn’t want to give us an address although we have her fingerprints and we are on it. Look at her. She’s clearly high, ” the turian with white tattoos said.

The human chuckled with his words. She definitely was. 

“Let’s keep her in a cell until she’s clean. We can release her in the morning, I suppose,” the C-Sec who was standing ended up before ordering her to stand up. An order that she didn’t listen to at all. 

With a shake of his head and a sigh, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up, taking her out of the room. Her scent prickled in his nose as something known, but he couldn’t remember what it was exactly and it made him glance at her with curiosity. She was tall for being a human, but still shorter than him, lean and more muscular than her species usually was. Her arm felt solid but squishy under his grip and her skin was nearly white and had freckles all over it. Probably on her legs too but even if he was curious and she was wearing a very short dress, he didn’t dare to peek down: that wouldn’t have been appropriate for a C-Sec officer. She brushed back the long orange hair from her face with her free hand and the gesture released more of her scent. Something sweet and floral that rang a bell in the back of his mind. Later, he realized she had been staring at his uniform armour for a while.

“You are the guy who pinned me down, aren’t you?” she asked him, but the turian kept looking ahead.

“I am.” His voice was nice and the subvocals warm.

“Consider yourself lucky. Not that you’d have been my first turian, though, but I wouldn’t mind if you want to try again,” she said with a playful tone and giggle.

He chuckled nervously and grabbed two bottles of water on his way to the cell. She was… well, attractive for human standards. 

They walked the rest of their way in silence with the woman staring at him shamelessly with a smile. Then, he opened the door of the cell typing on the side panel and led her in. Taking a look around and gazing back at the C-Sec, she made a sad gesture with her extremely expressive face. 

“Are you going to leave me here all alone?” she said seductively while taking a step towards him and fixing her big brown eyes in his. 

Those eyes… That scent...

Garrus peered at her right leg with a shadow of a suspicion growing inside. He was right, freckles all over them, some black tattoos and a big nasty scar on her right thigh. She was her!

Alex took his peek down to her legs as a misunderstood sign of interest as she was still quite high. Closing the distance between them, she slid one of her arms around the turian’s waist, raising the other up to the nape of his neck. And he completely froze. Then, she got onto her toes and touched his mouth plates with her lips. The C-sec Officer gasped with surprise, also blushing deeply at the same time. Her lips were soft and warm and the intimacy and proximity were actually quite arousing. She had gone straight away for two of the most sensible spots in turian anatomy and, in other circumstances, that would have been more than enough to drive him crazy. If she wouldn’t have been as high as a kite. If they wouldn’t be in C-Sec HQ. And if he wouldn’t have been in shock. 

“_Spirits _Alexandra, what the hell are you doing?” he brushed her hands away and stepped back, his sight going back down to her leg.

The woman stared at him astonished and followed the point of her body where his eyes were locked onto her scar… Suddenly, his cobalt clan tattoos seemed quite familiar, as well as his voice.

“Shit… are you... Garrus?” she frowned in a mixture of embarrassment and happiness. Then she had a fit of laughter that made her cry while still looking at him, gobsmacked.

The officer scoffed and fluttered his jaw plates in an uncomfortable grin. 

“Ok, you need to sleep this off,” he said pulling her arm to sit her on the cot trying to touch her as little as he could. “Tomorrow will be another day for sure.”

“Will you be back? Gosh, I’m so high… this is embarrassing… I _kissed_ you! Please, promise me you’ll be back,” she said drying the wet path of the tears on her cheeks but laughing again after.

“I will, I promise. Just… lie down and have some rest,” he said before leaving the cell still bewildered.

***

The morning after, Alex tried to pull together all that was left of her dignity, trying to recall everything she could about the previous hours. She had blackouts about what happened with the C-Sec officers and the memories she had didn’t seem to be real at all. Sitting on the small cot with her legs bent on it and her arms circling them and thinking about the events, she was not sure if she had made everything up. Garrus? After all those years? At least she didn’t have a hangover. 

The door opened and a turian with white tattoos showed up. Immediately, she recognised him as the one who had taken her declaration and the reality took shape. His gesture was quite ironic when he spoke, smirking all the time. 

“Rise and shine, Lieutenant Murphy. I hope you are feeling more… composed today. You can go, no charges have been pressed. Although Officer Vakarian would like to speak to. If you follow me…” he said keeping the door open for her. 

It was impossible not to show surprise with the mention of her military name. 

“Shit, they knew who I am. Of course, they do! They are the C-Sec after all. It’s just a matter of time before all this reaches Anderson’s ears…” she thought with concern while following the turian to one of the offices. 

He opened the door for her still with that stupid mandible fluttery that was a smile and she muttered a quick _thank you _before getting in. The owner of the office stood up from his chair when she stepped in the room and walked towards the front of the table. She didn’t make it up, the guy in front of her was Garrus without any doubt. Just older, broader, taller and with a longer crest. Quite handsome if you were into turians, actually. 

He leaned back on the table with a gesture that was also a smirk, “So… Lieutenant Alexandra Murphy, N7 Vanguard currently suspended due to _classified_ reasons. You are making the most of your suspension. That’s for sure.”

His tone was not a reproach. It actually sounded more like a teasing and she snorted loudly, feeling the heat spreading on her cheeks. “I… I still can’t believe all that happened yesterday. I wanted to apologize because I… I literally assaulted you. I’m sorry. That was totally out of place.”

Garrus rubbed involuntarily the back of his neck in an uncomfortable gesture, adjusting his visor after, “Well, I guess we can pretend that never happened. Although it was actually my first _kiss_ with a human, so I would rather not,” he said with a shy but witty tone that made Alexandra smile. Then he turned quite serious, “I also wanted to apologize. My colleague’s behaviour with your friend was not appropriate and she’ll be judged for it. All of this situation won’t be raised to your official in charge in case you are worried about it.”

“Oh, good. That’s a relief, trust me. And... she is not my friend. I don’t really know her… As well as I didn’t know she was a dealer.”

“And even not knowing her, you stood up for her?” he asked, admired.

“Well… it’s a long story,” she replied. 

There were five seconds where they were both analyzing each other quietly until she laughed and spoke.

“You know what? I spent all my spare time during a whole year looking for you on Earth, making phone calls to every turian camp and travelling to different settlements before I found out that you had left. I just wanted to thank you for what you did. I actually had a full speech ready for that moment and I knew every single line by memory. And now you are in front of me… I don’t even know what to say. Thank you, I guess.”

Garrus chuckled softly. “This is one of the most awkward moments in my life, trust me. But you are welcome,” he said running a hand over his face on a tired gesture. “My shift is actually finished, I was just waiting for you to have a little chat.”

Again, they both stayed quiet, staring at each other. 

“Ey, do you want to grab a coffee? There’s a place nearby where they make the best levo coffee in the Citadel. I suppose it would be the same with the dextro one.”

“Yeah. I mean, why not?”

“Good. Perhaps I can explain all this or embarrass myself even further, who knows?” she said with a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two in a day! Unbelievable! And my favourite turian is back... ^^


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Saterra once more for the beta-reading ^^

“Ok. Just wait. I’ve got another one. What about… this one?” 

Alex raised an eyebrow and pulled a different face looking at him. Garrus stared at her expression with seriousness, thoughtful. “Pffff… I give up. That could mean anything. How do you do that? I mean, raising your… Can you do the same with the other one? Wait… you can actually alternate them?!”

The human burst into laughter after her demonstration of facial movement while Garrus stared at her still perplexed.

“It was _incredulity_. Honestly, Garrus. Humans have been around the Citadel for eight years, why didn't you take a little time to learn about our expressions? It is not rocket science!”

“It’s not my fault that we don’t have a lot of humans working in the C-Sec! That would have made things easier. Anyway, turians are better with the subvocals… and our sense of smell is also quite developed. The problem is that you don’t smell like _ incredulity _ when you are pulling that face at me!”

“You have to be kidding me… that was not in the books. Would you be able to smell my… I don’t know… _ concern _?”

Garrus made a meditative gesture with his jaws. “Mmm… perhaps? Although it would be quite mixed up with other things. Your body releases hormones with some feelings we are able to detect. But I don’t think your _ concern _ has a specific trace. We’ll have to try, I guess.”

“Mmmhh… that’s a good excuse to meet up tomorrow again. I’m glad to hear all this Turian-Human coffee approach is at least paying off and you are learning something about us,” she said with a grin. 

“As your only and most advanced student, I have to say that you suck as a teacher. Mocking on me while I’m still learning… Reason enough to give up,” he teased her.

“Oh, no! You cannot deprive me of your company over caffeine. That wouldn’t be fair,” she pulled the saddest face ever, making the turian chuckle.

They had really gotten along. It had been two weeks since he detained her and she invited him to their first caffe latte when he finished his night shift. They exchanged emails and the day after she had asked him out again. Then, he did it, and before they realized, it turned into a routine before he began his shift. They had spoken and joked about turian and human differences and also about themselves. Garrus was kind of married with his job. Although he still had some good friends in Palaven, since his arrival to the Citadel he had been fully committed to the C-Sec. First, because he was no more than an apprentice. Then, because his own father held an important position in its hierarchy. And now that Vakarian senior had retired, because Garrus wanted to truly change things in that place. He loved his job, although he was always complaining about the endless bureaucracy, corruption and the loopholes that some people, like the owner of the Flux, used all the time to have their ways. 

His omnitool shone in yellow, alerting he had a phone call. He pressed some buttons and his face changed when he saw the name on it. “I have to answer this. I’ll be back in a minute,” he said standing up and walking some steps away from the table.

Alex checked her own emails while waiting for him. One of them was from Dr. Alestia, asking her to come by to her laboratory to check on her implants given that she was in the Citadel too. There were two from Anderson, one reminding her to go to her appointment with the Asari and the other one telling her the day and hour of her military hearing with a long list of the _ do's _ and _ don’ts _. Having the email there was just a reminder of her shitty life perspective, so she deleted it immediately.

“Sorry, it was Solana, my sister,” Garrus said sitting back on the table. Turian facial gestures were not easy to read as their facial plates lacked expression, but his subvocals gave out some sadness or worry. 

“Is everything all right?” she asked him.

“Yes. She was giving me the daily medical report. Our mother… she’s been ill for a little while now, but I would rather leave that topic for a different day over something stronger than caffeine,” he explained with a sort of smile, trying to play it off as he didn’t want to ruin the mood with that. Turians were not given to sharing those kinds of family matters, as his father had always said. The fact that his mother was dying and he could do absolutely nothing about it was undermining his spirit, but that was the truth, there was nothing he could do at all. 

“Believe it or not, I’m good at listening, so if at any time you feel you want to talk about it…” she dropped the invitation.

“I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Alexandra,” the turian said with an honest smile this time. She didn’t push it any further. 

This time it was her omnitool the one that rang and she hissed, looking at the screen.

“Shit, I have to take this one too,” she said pressing the answering button revealing the face of a human with a uniform on the other side of the line.

“You are not answering my emails, Lieutenant Murphy. The hearing is tomorrow at 1330. We’ll meet at our Embassy at the Presidium. Read - the - email. Is that clear?” Captain Anderson’s deep voice rumbled in the video call.

“Hi, Anderson. Nice to see you. Crystal clear. For fuck’s sake, I’m sorry for having a life,” she provoked him with a bored gesture.

The Captain sighed and frown with her answer. “Just be there,” and he hung up.

“Do you always speak like that to your superiors?” Garrus was horrified about her reply to his former officer. It was something inconceivable for him, born and raised in a strict military education. 

“Not always. Just when I’m pissed off or when I find them annoying. Which is most of the time, by the way. But I am an awful soldier, remember?”

Alex had also told the turian everything about her past and her life. Everything about her recruitment, her implants and her infamous military career. She had even told Garrus about the Batarian pirates as the reason for her suspension spite it was classified. Curiously, he didn’t run away when she told him the story of her cold-blood murder. Actually, he didn’t judge her at all and even said that, if he would have been in the same situation, he might have reacted the same way. Then, he joked about the fact that he was a terrible turian too, as well as she was a terrible soldier.

“Where are they? The implants I mean,” he asked.

Alex brushed her orange hair over her head and turned around, following with her finger the vertical scar on the back of her neck, nearly on the skull, before facing him again.

“Is not just there now. It’s everywhere. It has spread all over my nervous system, so it’s impossible to get rid of them.”

“I guess it also has a locator, am I right?”

“Bull’s eye!” she grinned but even with there was deep sadness and frustration in her voice. “But I can do cool tricks. And kick your ass without even touch you,” she said creating a small biotic field on her right hand that lightened their table in purple.

They already had a conversation about her unusual conditions in the N7 and had analyzed meticulously the different outcomes of the hearing she had today. Garrus was still bogged down with it, trying to figure out the best way to free her from her duty at the Alliance. In his opinion, they had clearly overstepped their authority but the only option he was able to come with was to run away from them, covering it as a disappearance, but it would be impossible to carry out as she had that damn locator on her, too. 

“I should get going or I’ll be late. I’ve got the day off tomorrow if you want to hang out after the hearing. There is a turian Sci-Fi film that you have to watch if you want to be considered a former turian friend. It is a coincidence that I just bought it.”

Alex scoffed, sceptical, “Honestly? You guys travel in space, you are part of the Citadel, you have conquered your whole System and even won space wars… What else is for Sci-fi to make up about turians?”

Garrus shrugged with an amused gesture. “All that is run-of-the-mill. But what about time travel?”

The woman laughed with his enthusiasm, realizing that, deep down, Garrus was a big turian nerd. “Ok, I’m in. But I will choose the next one,” she said.

“Fair enough. I’ll drop you a text later. Enjoy your suspension!” he teased him with a wide grin.

“And you enjoy your boring Inspector work!” she replied ironically while leaving.

He had left half of his coffee and she was starting to suspect that he really didn’t like it, but they had gone to that place next to the C-Sec HQ almost every day since they met. 

Another beeping alarm on her omnitool deleted the stupid grin on her face completely: Hackett. He was still on Earth thanks to the providence, taking care of some issues that arose in the Earth police department after the turians had given it into human hands. And by _ issues _ the news meant corruption, bribes and abuse of authority, which was not a surprise at all. Humans were sometimes… well, kind of prone to stumble over the same stone over and over again. Stubborn and difficult learners. But in their defence, even in the C-Sec they had those problems and people like Garrus were trying to stop them. The comparison of Hackett with the turian give her a chill. She had never thought in Hackett as a paladin pro-justice and him being the defender of mankind after everything was ironic. To be honest, and even if Alex would never say it out loud, he was just doing what it was better for everyone. For the common good. Even if he was ruining lives in the process, hers being at the top of the list.

She tapped on the notification and the email opened in a new window. The content was scarce: he had already spoken to the jury that will be in the hearing and the possibility of being fully cleared was a fact. He also included some arse-licking about how important she was for the N7 project and gave her some briefing about an ongoing mission in the Iera System, were the Alliance was setting up new colonies, explaining to her that it would be her next destination. He added that Staff Lieutenant Alenko would join her as her superior when his mission on board the Normandy was over. 

“Wow… no time to lose” she sighed deleting the email. She finished her coffee reading a new book about Drell religion, one of the last species she still had left on her list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two left...


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

As expected, she had been cleared of all charges, which was not a surprise, so the only reminder of all that pantomime would be a new report on her far-from-spotless career. Painting her in the hearing as a hot-blooded justice defender worked and Anderson’s speech about the pressure and responsibility that all N7 soldiers felt when they found out that one of their colonies had been slaughtered - evoking memories of the attack on Earth and blinding her in a kind of PTSD trance - had been more than enough to convince the Citadel military jury to spare her actions. Eight weeks of grounded suspension in the Citadel in order to recover and she would be back to active service, although they all advised her to cool down her mind and follow the orders of the Alliance brass to the T thenceforth. 

The knot in her throat tightened when they asked her if there was anything left to say, but she refused to speak as the fact of telling her version of the story in front of the jury wouldn’t change anything. Depending on the integrity of the members of the hearing, they would raise a report that, in the very worst-case scenario, would end up with the cease of all Human-Citadel cooperation. But after a long chat with Garrus regarding the military ideology in the Citadel that made her realize putting the common good above the individual liberty was not just an Earth thing, they probably would just do nothing at all. Especially considering that the scientists that performed the biotic experiments were, respectively, Asari and Salarian. So, her options were clear, for the common good and in order to not damage the Earth-Citadel cooperation as it was, and that had actually saved her species, she had to keep her mouth shut. 

It wouldn’t lead to the best outcome for her, but it was for everyone else. In spite of the deep and visceral anger that she professed against Hackett, she didn’t want to throw overboard the intergalactic agreement airing how awful humanity could still be. 

Alex knocked on the turian’s door and waited for the answer. She has been briefly in Garrus' house before, basically picking him up to go somewhere else. When he opened, he was for sure not expecting a fully uniformed red-headed Alliance officer and the turian stood at attention as he always did with any military belonging visitor in the C-Sec. It was the first time Alex wore her official uniform in the Citadel and she looked extremely professional and also quite upright. 

“What are you doing?” she asked with a disapproval gesture on her face, frowning. 

“Sorry… occupational hazard, I suppose,” he replied, revealing a hint of nervousness in his subvocals. “How was it?”

Her face was a freckled mask although he could smell the frustration. Garrus was getting very good at recognizing her scents. She took her heels off, pulling off her hairband and letting her hair cascade around her face while walking towards his sofa. “As expected. All clear and eight weeks grounded. And I could really do with a drink right now.” 

Garrus offered her a levo beer, pulling out of the fridge a dextro one for him. Now that she was sitting on his sofa she could feel how big it actually was compared with a human one as her feet didn’t reach the floor if she leant on the back. She ended up crossing her legs on it, lotus-style, hoping he wouldn’t mind.

“You know? Perhaps this is for the best. I mean… I should assume that this is my life. Perhaps Anderson is right and if I was more manageable I would get more privileges, like longer shore leaves and actual holidays.”

“Well… perhaps. Would that make things better?” he wanted to know.

Alex sighed with resignation, “I don’t know, Garrus. It’s just… it is what it is, you know?”

“Well, look on the bright side, if at the end you decide to fall into line, you’ll be able to spend some time on Earth during your breaks. Or come back to the Citadel, invite me to some drinks and teach me more of your… highly expressive facial gestures.”

Alex drew an involuntary smile on her face with his witty comment. To her surprise, the thought of spending more time over a cup of coffee or a beer with Garrus cheered her up somehow. And it was a strange feeling. Definitely warm. They had only met each other two weeks ago and she already considered him a friend. Actually, a better friend than most of her Alliance colleagues. He cared about her, and that fact was something utterly new in her life. Garrus had been tinkering with his omni tool and now the turian B film about time travel was on the screen, showing a kind of time machine that had nothing to see with a Tardis, the only time machine she was fan of, as well as a turian with a weapon and what seemed to be another very odd turian without carapace. 

“Ok, that’s weird. Where are the plates? Has he ripped it off?” she asked trying to change her own broody mood.

“Obviously not. But they travel to the past, in a time when there was no radiation in Palaven and we looked as exposed as asari or humans.” 

“Have you brought me to your house to watch a film about fully naked turians? Garrus! You’re gonna make me blush!” she teased him with a chuckle. 

“Ha, ha. Very funny. They wear clothes at some point, I think.” But he didn’t press the play button and faced her, staring for a while, tapping the glass bottle with his talons with a hesitant gesture in his blue electric eyes. He had actually been quite fidgety and his nervousness was still thrumming in his subvocals. And that was strange.

“Garrus, what’s going on?”

He inhaled deeply before answering.

“I am leaving the Citadel tomorrow. To work with the Alliance, actually. Is regarding a case I have been working in, investigating someone… a turian Spectre called Saren. I can’t tell you more because it’s classified.”

All that rang a bell in Alex’s mind. She had heard that name before for sure but waited for him to carry on.

“Commander Shepard dropped by in the C-Sec today and asked for my cooperation with this matter, and I said yes. Is a great opportunity to bring that guy down at last. I can’t just let it go.”

“And what is the problem with it? Why are you so hesitant about it?” she asked him forcing a grin on her face. It was a great opportunity for him, to work together with Shepard, the first recently promoted human Spectre. Probably, the first step to make his name known in the Citadel military. He had also mentioned his desire of becoming a Spectre himself one day.

The silence was his only answer and Alex followed him with her gaze when he stood up and went to his bedroom, hearing him opening a drawer. She felt stupid sitting on the sofa, not knowing if she was missing any piece of information or perhaps she was just lost in translation. When he came back, with his blunt talons clicking slightly on the floor, he carried something in his hand. Garrus sat again with an extremely serious gesture, his eyes fixed on hers, and opened his fist. There was a small cylindric gadget made of metal with a clear button on the top of it. Alex gazed at him, confused now.

“Garrus… is that?”

“Yes. I’ve been following this little rascal for some days. It’s been quite elusive but, finally, the C-Sec has destroyed evidence today and this was one of them. Or was meant to be,” then he added as if it was not clear enough, “it is for you”

Alex stared at him and raised her voice involuntarily, annoyed with his smuggling attempt. “Are you insane? You shouldn’t have done that! What if they catch you?” 

The turian flapped his mandibles in a gesture that meant to be a laugh, but it sounded strangely weak. “I would have made up something, like that I collect forbidden artefacts from ancient times… or that I’m a terrorist that wants the Citadel to go blind. Whatever.” Her stare was getting frostier with his mocking, so he decided to stop. “They won’t catch me. I made sure of that,” his tone was reassuring and pacifying now, lending the object to her.

It was a signal jammer. Their civilian use had been forbidden in the Citadel a while ago because of the danger they meant in a world that was mostly moved by radio frequencies, and after some pranks using them cost some million of credits in compensations. This was a personal one, though, with a small radius of action. Probably less than two feet around the person who carried it. Enough to make her implants go dark in front of the Alliance eyes and also enough to ban their attempts to switch them off.

Alex stared at the turian with a confusing mixture of feelings. “Are you helping me escape?” 

“If anyone asks, my only crime was to smuggle an antique for my best friend. What you use it for, is up to you.”

The human was still perplexed and grabbed the object from his friend's hand, rubbing her fingers on his palm slightly. And Garrus did that gesture he used to do when he was nervous, running a hand over the back of his neck. 

“I… hope you use it wisely,” he barely muttered, avoiding her gaze and looking back at the screen that seemed to be displaying something infinitely more interesting than her still bewildered face.

She was about to ask him directly what was he acting so weird when the pieces clicked together. “You are leaving tomorrow.”

“Yes, I am,” he replied, now gazing down.

“And you don’t know if you will be back before my suspension finishes.”

“That’s correct.”

“If I decide to use this… Today would be the last day we see each other again.”

Garrus took some time to answer that last time. “Yes, that seems to be the most possible outcome.”

They stayed quiet for a little while, Alex examining the little cylinder in her palm and peeking at the turian on the corner of her eye, the silence starting to get quite dense.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why not? I mean... this will give me points as a good guy, I believe. And you’ll owe me. Twice, actually,” he ironized with a smirk, although his tension was still palpable. Humour as an escape valve. He was a dork.

And Alex did something quite unexpected then, and also quite human, reaching for him and planting a kiss on his mandible plate. Garrus got totally stiff under the contact and didn’t move a muscle when she whispered a quiet _ thank you _that close to his cheek that he was able to feel her breath. But Alex didn’t get back to her previous seated position. He was acting odd about the fact they wouldn't see each other again and she was sure he was upset. Maybe the warm feeling worked both ways. 

She slid a hand over his shoulders and nuzzled the side of his face where she had dropped the kiss on. His reaction was to emit a purr with his subvocals, although it was quite different from the one she first heard from him nearly ten years ago on Earth. Her fingers slid slowly over his neck in a caress, following the leathery skin that his plates didn’t cover, and her lips travelled a few inches to his mouth, dropping a new kiss closer to it, and he leaned slightly towards the contact. One of his hands fisted the fabric of the sofa with uncertainty when she shoved a leg over him, sitting on his lap. She grabbed his other hand and pulled it to rest on her hip, being his talons as light as a feather over her clothes. At least he was finally looking at her.

She could feel his hesitation when she removed his sempiternal visor, twisting around to leave it on the table behind them and he hardened his grip on her body to stabilize her on that movement before blinking a couple of times to adapt his sight to the now dim colours of the room. Before he could realize, the human had tossed aside the tunic of her Alliance uniform and her bra in a fluid movement and her arms circled his shoulders again, leaning forward to kiss him.

“Alexandra… I don’t think this is a good idea,” he whispered giving out loads of different mixed up hints in his subvocals.

Her fingers were tracing over the sensitive spot behind his neck, making him shudder.

“If you ask me to stop, I’ll do it."

He didn’t, even if he was absolutely petrified under her touch. 

“I’ve... never been with a human before. I don’t know what to do...” he explained with ragged voice, beginning to feel the pressure of his erection behind his plates. 

“We are not that different. Just be careful with your teeth. That’s all,” she said while pulling off his top, revealing the leathery skin of his torso, his muscles as well as his rough carapace. In truth, they couldn’t be more physically different. At last, Garrus decided to trace the curve of her body with a gentle talon while his other hand roamed on her waist in an understandable decision, considering that was an erogenous zone for turians. She redirected his efforts to her breast, guiding his hand up, and he cupped it and squeezed it gently, feeling her nipple beading under his touch. Alex let a moan escape and he looked at her intently when he focused on rolling it with the rough pad of his fingers, concentrating his attention on the other one after. Then, he lifted his other hand to touch her hair and he seemed quite delighted with the texture and the way is slid in between his fingers, like water. Again, as he would have done with a female turian, Garrus reached for the nape of her nake, caressing it softly and threading his talons with the hair there and he pushed her just enough to rest her forehead on his. And Alex got closer and kissed his mouth plates. Turians didn’t have lips so kissing had never been on the menu for him, but then he felt her wet tongue accompanying the action and it became, in fact, quite arousing, so he also opened his mouth and let his tongue play with hers. His higher body temperature made her contact feel strangely cool but he must have been doing something well because she moaned again, pushing against his body and rolling her hips on him.

At that point, his purr had become louder inevitably. With a devilish grin and her eyes fixed on his, she pulled back and stood up, undoing the button of her uniform trousers and wriggling her way out of them as well as her underpants. Garrus didn’t lose time and did the same with promptness, not even standing up for it. Having her softness sitting back on him was a relief and he anchored his talons to her buttocks, pulling her hips, a hand going back to her breast after it, definitely more confident.

Alex smiled touching his mouth plates.

“You are a quick learner, I see,” she teased him, slipping a hand over his abs and down until she reached his swollen plates that kept his member hidden. Not that male turians were extremely sensitive in that particular area but her hand there and the attentions of her mouth on his neck were more than enough to make him slowly unsheath. Garrus clenched his mandibles and bit back a groan when she traced her fingers over his cock. As well as other turians, he was dark blue, thick, all ridgety and was already sleek as their body produced natural lubrication, and its tip thinner and slightly twisted instead of the usual human glans. 

Alex sounded breathy the next time she spoke. “Female humans and turians are very similar in their anatomies and we both have that spot inside…” she didn’t have to finish the sentence before Garrus had one of his talons tracing along her slit, relieved to have finally found some common ground. His finger pressed slightly and it slid with ease in her, as she stiffened in response. 

“You are really wet,” is the only thing he managed to say and she groaned when he found the exact spot he was looking for.

“Only females lubricate,” her voice getting huskier. “There is a small bud of nerves here...” she said shifting his thumb to her clit. When he reached it and rubbed it with his talon, she closed her eyes, moaning again and rocking her hips. With a fast and too rough movement, Garrus stilled her with his free hand, clinging hard on her hip. His instincts were surfacing, inevitably and he hissed with frustration.

“I want to feel you inside me,” she moaned. 

Even if his cock was throbbing and achy to fulfil her desire, he showed exemplary self-restraint.

“You are too soft… I don’t want to hurt you…” he explained in a tone that was more like an excuse.

Alex threw both of her hands to the exposed skin of his waist and scratch him. “I’m not that soft, Garrus. I can perfectly handle you,” and leaned her head on his shoulder and bit his neck hard as a provocation.

She knew how to pull his strings too well.

Garrus’ self-control was totally lost after that action and the turian moved her off him roughly. His next movement was to grab her waist and put her on her knees against the back of the sofa. Then, he positioned himself behind and thrust in her hard in a single movement, reaching deep inside her. She cried in pleasure and the turian momentarily stopped to bite the back of her neck as a sign of dominance, breathing heavily and restraining himself on keep pumping into her straight away, giving her some time to let her body adapt to his size. The feeling of her was so different than he was used to, all wet, soft and extremely tight at the same time. But she didn’t give him the chance as Alex rocked her hips, demanding more, and he obliged. He thrust into her, fast and hard, releasing the human’s neck at last and clenching her hips with strength. Alex felt liquid heat spreading all over her body and her own hand reached for her clit. He raised one of his hand to fist her hair and pulled it, tilting her head sideways. His tongue licked along her neck, now covered in a thin layer of dampness that tasted salty with a reminiscence of her scent and she moaned, slow and deep with the hot and slightly rough feeling of his tongue. She could feel her climax building in her core and how her walls began to tighten right before she fell over the edge. Garrus’ pace became frantic and his breath and purr deepened feeling her sex squeezing his cock and making it more difficult to pull back. Feeling close to his own climax, he bit Alex again, this time on the muscle between her neck and shoulder and she whined in the middle of her orgasm. With one last thrust, the turian emptied himself in her with a growl. He had to reach for the back of the sofa to avoid collapsing and his head fell forwards on her shoulder, both catching their breaths back. 

A ferrous smell made him become aware of what he had done. “Shit, Alexandra. You’re bleeding,” Garrus rushed up staring at the human who was still trapped in between the back of the sofa and his own body. No scratches as he always blunted his talons, but his grip had left red marks on her hips and the back of her neck had a clear turian set of teeth that will bruise for sure. Not to mention the actual bleeding bite she had on the left side of her neck-shoulder.

She stood up touching her neck when the turian went to find his first aid kit in the bathroom. “Garrus, don’t freak out. Is just a little bit of blood,” she tried to calm him down. He came back in the living room, still fully naked with a sterile gauze and put it on the bite, making some pressure on it. 

Her smell was everywhere, floral and sweet and musky. It was overwhelming and he got carried along. “I’m sorry… I marked you. It’s not fair to blame instincts for this. I don’t know what I was thinking, sorry.”

Alex didn’t really understand the reason for his disturbing, but the word _ mark _brought a sly smile to her lips and a memory of something she had read before. She brought both hands to the sides of his head and made him stop panicking, fixing her eyes on his. “Garrus, it is all right. I know what it means and I’m fine with it, so stop trying to wipe it off, ok?” 

The turian had an illegible gesture on his face, although he seemed relieved and put his nervousness aside when she grinned. “Apart from all this… my performance… has it been... good?” he asked. 

She laughed. “Yes, it has. And I wouldn’t mind trying again if you wanted to.” 

Garrus was the one who chuckled now, inexplicably still shy, and Alex was sure he had actually blushed.

“Do you want to stay tonight?”

“I don’t know… I don’t think I can sleep in your bed, to be honest with you. Besides, you’re leaving tomorrow and being rested could be important… I might keep you up all night if I stay,” she teased him.

“Oh!… Ehm… It doesn’t sound like a bad plan for me... But you are probably right,” he admitted in the end. Garrus sat down and stared at the signal jammer that was still on the table while Alex put her clothes on in silence, lost in her thoughts.

“I would really like to talk about this… about us once you are back in the Citadel.” She knew they wouldn’t be able to have any type of contact whilst his mission lasted, as the N7 had a very strict secrecy policy during them, one being the communications conveniently restricted.

Garrus nodded his head and inhaled deeply before asking the question that was burning him inside. “What if you are not here?” his blue eyes were piercing hers.

Alex didn't want that to be a goodbye. Not at all. She was somehow incredulous about what she was about to say. “Call me once you’re back and… Well, I guess we can figure it out. I will be able to come on my next shore leave if I behave...”

The turian made a gesture that looked like a faint relief, even if he was still hesitant in front of her words. 

“I don’t really know how this will work out,” she stopped herself with a sigh. “But I like you too, and I'd like to have the chance to try. Us. I won’t be using that, Garrus” she said pointing with her head at the jammer and declaring her intention to not disappear.

He grinned with relief and a warm feeling growing in his chest and looked at her movements while she tied her hair back and gave him a smile, his mating mark poking under her uniform. It was not a bond mark, but something serious enough in his culture to keep other turians away from the female. “Keep it, just in case. Besides, I don’t want to get caught with the evidence of my crime here. And I would be less worried knowing you have it. Just in case, as I said.”

Alex nodded and picked the thing from the table, putting it in her pocket. They walked together to his door and he nuzzled her cheek briefly, and everything felt just in place.

“Say _ hi _ to Kaidan and Jane and be careful out there.” She gave him one last kiss and a smile before leaving. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will it be a happy ending after all?... Stay tuned for the last one.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a 100% canon, I had to modify the Battle of the Citadel in ME slightly for fitting things in, I hope you don't mind ^^

“That fucking Geth had a fucking flamethrower. Shit, this is insane,” Biggs said squatting by her side, both sheltered behind one of those useless-until-that-day massive plant pots in the Presidium.

“Enemies incoming!” one of the other soldiers in her squad shouted and she peeked out to scan the situation. A bullet ricocheted near her head, shattering the plant pot’s edge. 

“There’s a sniper at your two, Garcia! Behind the column at the Hanar Embassy. We’ll keep the others busy,” she shouted to the Infiltrator, who nodded and used his Tactical Cloak ability to disappear from sight.

“Same strategy as before, Murphy?” 

“Indeed. Watch your heads, guys!” she said raising her hand and shooting with her pistol nearly blindly as it was the only thing they could do until the sniper was down. Some seconds later, an isolated shot was heard on their right when the Infiltrator had his job done. That meant that the real fight could begin. 

“Let’s go!”

The Adept threw a singularity vortex to the right and she did the same on the left side. The Soldiers riddled the Geth trapped on them while the Sentinel hacked their Shields. She charged against one of the Krogan mercs that was not trapped by the vortex, making him stumble back, and shot him twice in his head. Everything happened way too fast and, when the other krogan raised his shotgun ready to take revenge on his partner, she was already behind him with her M-5 Phalanx aiming at the weak spot on their armour: the back of his neck. She kicked the massive krogan on his knee, making him fall heavily on the floor with a grunt.

“Who has sent you here?” her hands tightened on the heavy pistol grip until her knuckles were white. 

The merc didn’t answer and Alex shot at his leg as a warning, knowing that part of his armour was really thick so the bullet wouldn’t get in it. But it was painful anyway and the krogan howled and cursed her. 

“The next one won’t be this gentle. We are going to try again, who has sent you to the Citadel?”

“Saren… Council Chambers. That’s all I know,” he grunted with a grimace, touching his leg. 

Alex checked that her teammates had finished the Geth and were getting ready for the next wave that was already making its appearance around the corner, as she was able to verify when the bullets flew around her. The human was able to avoid them creating a biotic Barrier and throwing herself onto the ground, but the krogan she was retaining was not that lucky.

It had been a perfect mundane day two hours ago. Alex was in the gym, training with Vega and Biggs when a voice over the intercom called them all to the exterior pitch. There were not many Alliance soldiers in that facility at the Citadel, just the ones on leave, some suspended as she was and nearly one hundred that formed the usual team in the spatial station, defending the Embassies and working closely with the C-Sec when they were needed. Captain Anderson was already waiting for them claiming that it was not a drill, and gave them instructions to get their armours and weapons and take the shuttles to the Presidium, where they would be defending the evacuation and holding the position until new orders were delivered. Defending it against the Geth. No further briefing was given. Nothing at all. But she needed answers, fighting blindly for the Alliance was something Alex was not willing to do anymore.

“Saren Arterius… the fallen Spectre…” she thought with a wave of worry rushing through her veins. “Garrus was meant to be dealing with him… with Alenko and Shepard. Shit… What the hell is he doing in the Citadel? Where is Garrus?”

She peeked to her left where the lift to the Council Chambers was ten meters away from her. “Vega? Biggs? I have to check on something… Shepard might be screwed up if she’s still alive. Can you hold this without me?” she shouted to her squad. 

“No fucking way you are not going by yourself, _ senorita _!” Vega answered when he stood up for shooting one of the Geth that had gotten too close to her.

“It might be nothing. Probably it will, but I have to make sure. Hold positions, that’s our main mission. I’ll be back before you notice.”

“Murphy, you’re gonna get killed, you stupid bitch. Come back here immediately!” Biggs, who was also a Lieutenant, shouted really pissed off in the distance, but she had already run towards the lift after throwing a warning Singularity behind her. 

Alex pressed the button and covered herself from the riddle of shots that crashed her biotic Barrier once again. The doors slid closed and the full silence became thunderous around her. She perfectly knew her squad would be fine without her, but the uneasy feeling she had now in her stomach demanded answers. If Shepard was there, she was sure she could do with another pair of hands, and if she was not… well, it wouldn’t be good at all, so she would rather not think about that chance. Her saliva had turned thick in her mouth and she swallowed hard, breathing deeply to calm her nerves down in the quietness. When the screen marked the 9th floor, she raised her left hand and it shone in purple: her biotics ready to throw an attack when the door opened with a ding.

Five Geth flew into the air immediately with her Shockwave and she shot in the head the three of them that had landed closer. The other two were a few meters apart from each other and she knew she wouldn’t be able to end them both before they attacked her, but she had to do something. She charged against the furthest one and used Throw on it, shooting it towards the other enemy, trying to knock both down at the same time. She failed miserably but at least one of the Geth was down. Alex raised her pistol to defend herself from the other one, ready to endure the pain of the shot she was for sure receiving as that thing was already pulling the trigger of its SMG, when its face disappeared, blown up on a jumble of sparkles. A loud lonely shot had sounded in the distance at the same time. The Geth collapsed onto its knees and she heard a well-known voice over her comm.

“You are absolutely rubbish at bowling, Murphy,” Kaidan’s familiar tone made her smile. “You have to thank that Garrus heard the lift coming up… and his aim as well!”

“I think I’m getting used to saving your ass, _ Murphy _” the turian added with irony. He had never called her by her surname and remarked it on a conscious ironic way.

She felt instant relief and laughed, peering up at the place where the shot had come from a couple of levels above, where two figures were standing over the edge of the underground garden she was in. “Nice to see you both alive and kicking, even if it’s laughing at my expense.”

Shepard appeared then in the garden, assault rifle ready, and stared at her and the scattered Geths around with confusion. “Murphy, what are you doing here?” she asked while Alex made a military salutation. She was way over her in the hierarchy now, so showing some respect seemed to be appropriate. 

“I heard you were having more fun here, ma’am,” perhaps it was not the time for jokes. “One of the mercs spat out that Saren was here. I just wanted to check on that lead.”

“It’s a very stupid movement to come here on your own,” she appointed, relaxing her gesture.

“All my squad are quite busy downstairs. We have been able to evacuate the Presidium, but the residential areas are being attacked too. The C-Sec is on it, but we don’t have enough units to face it.”

Kaidan and Garrus came in scene in the exact moment when an electric glimmer lit the corner of the garden. All four looked at the place where the dead body of a turian was starting to be lifted from the ground by an electric pulse. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Alex asked with a terrified expression that she was glad no one was seeing thanks to her helmet. 

“Shit, we killed him, didn’t we?” Kaidan asked stupefied.

“Sovereign must be doing something…” Shepard informed while the turian began to lose parts of his anatomy removed by an external force, being his flesh stripped from his bones that were, in fact, as metallic as a Geth was.

“Who is Sovereign and what is that thing?” Alex asked pointing to the being, who was now standing up and convulsing. 

Garrus looked at Shepard before speaking and she nodded, granting her permission. 

“Long story short… Sovereign is a Reaper intelligent dreadnought that landed on the Tower of the Citadel full of Krogan mercs and Geth trying to open the Mass Relay which is the Citadel and destroy the Station and the galaxy as well.” The turian would have paid to see her bewilderment face at that moment but the reborn Saren caught everyone’s attention when it roared and Shepard emptied her clip following its movements as the thing jumped around the garden, attacking them. 

“Look for cover!” she ordered while the others got their weapons ready to pursue the ex-turian around. 

That thing was fast, too fast, making impossible for Kaiden and Alex to reach him with any Shockwaves. It was bouncing off the walls but Alex was able to use Pull on him, not actually moving it from its place, but keeping it still for some seconds. Time enough for Shepard and Garrus to pepper it with their rifles until the pressure of the Sovereign power freed it, leaving Alex all drained, breathless and shaky.

“I liked that, Murphy. Change of strategy: Alenko, Murphy, keep it still as much as you can.”

“Damn, Shepard. You don’t know what you’re asking for,” Kaidan complaint with his jaws clenched in the effort of keeping the thing on the wall.

“Just do it, Kaidan!” she shouted in the end, using his name in a familiarity that was quite unusual on her.

Five rounds after with its corresponding clips emptied, the beast was completely destroyed this time and with no pieces left to be reassembled. Both biotic humans dropped on the floor at the same time, Kaidan getting a nutrient bar out from his suit, Alex unclasping her helmet and tossing it away, trying to gain her breath back. Her fingers trembled out of control opening the small foodstuff that she always kept in her suit as well, in case of an emergency like that one, when she was about to pass out.

Garrus squatted next to her while she ate with her head leant back to rest on the wall. He looked worried. “Are you all right?” the turian asked touching her shoulder gently in a reassuring way.

Alex showed him a thin smile. “Yes, this shit happens sometimes. Side effects,” she explained to him, being still out of breath.

Shepard gave some orders using her intercom, telling someone that Saren wouldn’t be a problem anymore. She looked preoccupied and thoughtful with the answer she got, though. “Good. Send our fleet to save them, the Citadel can wait. It’s a matter of time the Alliance fleet put down Sovereign as well. Saving the Council is the priority, now.” Then she faced Kaidan. “Tell Joker we’ll be there in five.”

Alenko nodded and passed the message to the Normandy pilot.

At the same time, Vega spoke over Alex’s comm, “Murphy, we are moving, the Presidium is clear but there are reporting lots of casualties in the residential areas. We have to get our asses there.” 

“How is that possible? I though the C-Sec and the asari were there!” she replied with a preoccupied gesture in front of the turian who had also heard the message.

“They have been decimated. We need you and all the help we can gather.”

_ "Fuck _."

“Commander… “ she began stumbling to stand up.

“I heard it, Murphy. But we can’t stay. Our priority is to save the Council.”

“Wait… what? Three bigwigs hidden in a spaceship against the civilians in the Citadel?”

“We have our orders, Murphy.”

“But you heard the message! The C-Sec is out,” Garrus made a pained gesture with his mandibles when he heard that, “and the Citadel asari commando too. The Alliance is the last line of defence!”

“Get ready to go,” Shepard told Kaidan and Garrus in a quiet tone, utterly ignoring Alex’s imploring face. The male human walked towards the Spectre but Garrus hesitated, still a few steps behind Alex.

“Fuck, Shepard! There are people dying there! I can’t believe you are going to leave us on the stake!” Alex shouted at her, making Shepard turned around to face her with a hardened gesture.

“The Alliance and the Citadel military establishes that in situations like this one saving the governing bodies has priority over civilians because of their potential value,” the Commander replied as if she was reading it right from the manual. The Commander put her helmet back on with a challenging posture towards Alex. “Perhaps if you hadn’t been that busy with your fucking insubordinations you would have learnt that. Besides it shouldn’t take that long to defeat Sovereign.” 

Alex could feel a blazing fury growing in her gut and the hair on her body bristled when her biotics peaked, unleashing purple electrical impulses over her skin: an uncommon side effect of her power. She didn’t care that Shepard was her former officer when she glared at her with frozen eyes. “Fuck you, Shepard. You and all your fucking Alliance brainwashed zombies. Those deaths… they’ll be on you,” she said with an icy tone before turning her back on her and walking a few steps to pick up her helmet from the floor where she dropped it, meeting Garrus’ doubtful gesture and gaze under his helmet for a second. 

“Garrus. Kaidan. We leave. Now!” Shepard spoke authoritarian, walking towards the ramp that gave access to the garden.

Alex walked to the lift, putting her helmet on with a bitter pain spreading in her body. She told Vega that she was on her way and pressed the button for the floor she was heading to. Then, turned around to see the turian still looking at her from the distance, holding his sniper rifle. A single tear rolled down her cheek when Garrus turned his back on her and followed Shepard towards the ramp. 

***

“Congratulations, Lieutenant Murphy. Both Lieutenant Biggs and Second Lieutenant Vega had told wonders about your actions during the attack on the Citadel. Even Commander Shepard praised your cooperation in ending Saren. I just wanted to congratulate you myself. Keep on this way and I’m sure we will be discussing a promotion in no time on your next assignment.”

She was standing at attention in his office, exhausted, without giving out a hint of emotion. Her eyes were fixed on the wall behind Admiral Hackett, bearing with his speech. “Didn’t Commander Shepard mention anything about my behaviour?” she asked with a serious tone, a mixture of apathy and indifference.

“She did, indeed. I have to say that her procedure was impeccable in that matter, acting according to the manual in any case. Her determination saved the Citadel Council as well as yours saved many lives in the Citadel, Lieutenant.”

Alex was still wearing her N7 armour stained in yellow krogan and blue turian blood. Her hair and skin were damp and dirty after the battle that had just ended an hour ago, with the death of Sovereign, whatever it was. The corpses of asari, salarian, turian and humans were still warm and spread over the ground on the residential and areas of the Citadel. Nearly two thousand of casualties between civilians and a nearly exterminated C-Sec force was far from being a good outcome for her. But her pain was far deeper than just that. “Many more lives could have been saved with her help, Admiral,” she mentioned with a monotonous tone. 

Hackett stared at her and exhaled slowly. When he spoke, his voice was rough and low. “As I said, her job was impeccable, Murphy. She did what it had to be done.” Suddenly, his expression swapped into a paternal and concerned one. “Have a shower, get a glass of scotch and tomorrow will be a different day, Alexandra. You’ve done a good job today. Dismissed.”

She didn’t salute when she left his office.

***

Her omni tool shone in yellow and the small symbol of the phone on the side warned her about the call. It was the sixth time he had phoned her. But she didn’t want to speak to him. Not after what happened before that day. Seeing him leaving… Following orders blindly… Prioritizing the Council to the citizens… Perhaps she had been wrong and he was no different than the others at all. And that thought ached in her heart and tightened her throat with the echoes of what it could have been. To be together.

She cast the thought away from her mind while accommodating the strap of her backpack on her shoulder. Inside there was a change of clothes, a bundle of credits, the book about Drell religion again and a piece of paper with some names and directions she had researched in a rush. Alex jerked up the hood of her oversized black sweatshirt making sure her hair was completely hidden and out of sight, standing out was the last thing she wanted right now and her hair caught attention inevitably. She dodged a couple of Alliance soldiers on her right, hiding her face, and went straight to the dock area where a massive and disorganized mass of citizens were trying to escape the Citadel and reach their origin planets as fast as they could after the attack that morning. 

Her omni tool lit up again. She took it off with a sorrow gesture and tossed it to the closest bin that was still standing on that place. 

The ship she was looking for was not difficult to find and she reached for the boarding pass in her ripped jeans, stroking at the same time the cold metal of the signal jammer. 

Alex would only have eight hours to flee. That was the lasting of the battery. Eight hours to disappear from the surface of the galaxy. To disappear from the Alliance and from everyone. 

Her nerves were on edge when she pressed the small button at the same time she gave her boarding pass to Omega to the batarian in charge, avoiding to look at him in the eye. 

He scrutinized her face with curiosity but let her board the ship.

The countdown had begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was the end! Not happy endings for anyone, I'm afraid. Although Products of Omega could be a real thing in some time. Would you like me to carry on with the story with the events of Omega and linking them to ME2? Suggestions accepted! Just drop a comment! Thanks once more for reading, Kudos, comments and patience! ^^


End file.
